5min-issue-12-09-25(Featured)

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Paradigm Pressroom’s 5 Bullets is a daily e-letter covering the economy and the markets, reaching 120,000 paying subscribers of the renowned financial publishing firm Paradigm Press.

Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

Wall Street’s “Witch Doctors”

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Change We Must
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;One of the most difficult concepts to accept in the economy and markets is change,&rdquo; says Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta.
Enrique is the first to acknowledge that investors have lost untold amounts of money by saying This time is different.
But at the same time, you can also lose money by witnessing change that&rsquo;s taken place&hellip; and denying it&rsquo;s real.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Which brings us to a classic observation of Warren Buffett&hellip;
"You have to be wildly optimistic to believe that corporate profits as a percent of GDP can, for any sustained period, hold much above 6%."
Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP is one of the metrics Buffett has long relied on to determine whether the broad stock market is over- or undervalued.
That quote, by the way, comes from an interview with Fortune in November 1999. It&rsquo;s become legendary because, as it turned out, the dot-com bubble was only weeks away from bursting. The Nasdaq slid 78% from early 2000 through late 2002.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Now&hellip; check out a chart Enrique spotted over the weekend &mdash; going all the way back to the end of World War II, when Buffett was still a teenager.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/47eBmXLPPR8sd2919dIckU/c575835d9aee8d248928106084186a93/FMF-Issue-12-08-25_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Look what&rsquo;s happened since the rebound from the 2007&ndash;09 financial crisis. Corporate profits as a percent of GDP have been far over the 6% level and indeed have spent most of that time over 9%.
&ldquo;We are now at 16 years and counting,&rdquo; Enrique says. &ldquo;Is that &lsquo;sustained&rsquo;?&rdquo;
I can hear an objection already: Yeah, look at all the funny money printed by the Federal Reserve since 2008&hellip; and all the wild federal spending since 2020. Of course the money would find its way into financial assets.
And your point?
Object to the policy all you want, but the S&amp;P 500 has grown over 10X from its March 2009 lows.
Like or not, that&rsquo;s change.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;You have to invest in the market environment you have&hellip; not the one you want,&rdquo; Enrique reminds us.
&ldquo;A strong technical picture is supported by falling interest rates, strong earnings and lower energy prices.
&ldquo;On top of that, the Trump administration has plummeting approval ratings and a midterm election next year that will define his legacy.
&ldquo;My view is he will do anything &mdash; legal or illegal &mdash; to get this stock market higher and secure a victory in the midterms.
&ldquo;It may end badly, but that&rsquo;s where we are right now.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Market Miscellany
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Gee, what was it we said here Friday about the Netflix-Warner Bros. tie-up being anything but a done deal?
Last night, Donald Trump told reporters &ldquo;there could be a problem&rdquo; with the deal owing to Netflix&rsquo;s existing &ldquo;big market share.&rdquo;
This morning, Paramount launched a hostile bid &mdash; offering $108 billion for the entirety of Warner Bros. Discovery. That contrasts with Netflix&rsquo;s agreement to pay $72 billion for the WB movie studio and HBO Max &mdash; excluding the cable channels like CNN and Discovery.
Paramount CEO David Ellison tells CNBC that his is the &ldquo;superior alternative&rdquo; and is more likely to meet with regulators&rsquo; approval.
On the theory Paramount has the inside track, Paramount shares are up 7.3% on the day while Netflix is down 4.3% (on top of Friday&rsquo;s losses). WBD, the object of this bidding war, is up 4.9%.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As for the major indexes, they&rsquo;re all starting the week in the red &mdash; if only a bit.
The S&amp;P 500 is down about a third of a percent at 6,847. The Dow&rsquo;s losses are similar, while the Nasdaq is down less than a quarter percent. &ldquo;Large caps only need one solid trading day to post new all-time highs,&rdquo; observes The Trading Desk&rsquo;s Greg Guenthner.
Congratulations are in order for Catalyst Trader readers. This morning Ray Blanco urged them to sell half their position in the developer of an oral weight-loss drug. That&rsquo;s a 182% gain in seven months. Plus, on Friday Rickards&rsquo; Strategic Intelligence readers took a 78% gain on B2Gold Corp.
Not much movement in precious metals with gold just under $4,200 and silver a few pennies under $58. Crude has tumbled back below $60, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate down nearly a buck to $59.15.
Bitcoin is holding the line on $90,000 and Ethereum is sitting tight just over $3,100.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> U.S. tariffs haven&rsquo;t put a dent in China&rsquo;s export machine.
China&rsquo;s customs administration reports that exports in the first 11 months of the year have topped $1 trillion &mdash; exceeding 2024&rsquo;s all-year record total.
The figures show November exports rose 5.9% year-over-year. That&rsquo;s even though Chinese exports to the United States have fallen 29% during the same period. Clearly the rest of the world is stepping up to buy the consumer-y crap that&rsquo;s become more expensive for Americans.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" /> Lights Out
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It turns out 2024 was a terrible year for power outages.
The U.S. Department of Energy is out with a report showing U.S. electricity consumers experienced an average 11 hours of power outages last year.
That&rsquo;s nearly twice as many as the annual average during the preceding decade.
Of course, averages are deceiving: Many people caught up in Hurricanes Helene and Milton went without power for days or weeks. Hurricanes accounted for 80% of the total lost hours.
&ldquo;Interruptions attributed to major events averaged nearly nine hours in 2024, compared with an average of nearly four hours per year in 2014 through 2023,&rdquo; says the report. &ldquo;Service interruptions that aren&rsquo;t triggered by major events routinely average about two hours per year.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/fykICAb4jhCqjKVTeICUV/e53b9c135823d0425329d36c4d417839/FMF-Issue-12-08-25_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
We&rsquo;ve been warning about the fragility of the power grid since mid-2022. Much of the grid is 30 years old, and portions are 50 years old.
And with the intense demand from AI data centers &mdash; a phenomenon we started discussing nearly two years ago &mdash; the situation is sure to get worse.
Paradigm readers have profited throughout 2025 playing the &ldquo;independent power producers&rdquo; that are not regulated utilities, and more opportunities are likely to present themselves in 2026. Stay tuned&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Stop, Thief! (Self-Checkout)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Maybe we&rsquo;ve reached &ldquo;Peak Self-Checkout.&rdquo;
LendingTree recently commissioned a survey revealing 27% of consumers who&rsquo;ve used self-checkout say they&rsquo;ve purposely taken something without scanning it &mdash; up from 15% two years ago.
Generationally, millennials lead the way &mdash; with 41% saying they&rsquo;ve done it, followed by 37% of Gen Z adults. Only 2% of Boomers fessed up to it.
As the NewsNation network reports, &ldquo;When asked why they stole, 47% said the current financial climate has made it difficult to afford essentials. Nearly as many (46%) cited higher prices.&rdquo; Meanwhile, 35% say self-checkout amounts to &ldquo;unpaid work,&rdquo; so taking a small item &ldquo;feels like compensation.&rdquo;
Several retailers are rethinking self-checkout &mdash; notably Dollar General, which said last year it removed self-checkout from 12,000 stores. The company was upfront about the reasons &mdash; the &ldquo;ongoing challenge from shrink.&rdquo;
&ldquo;I get that people are frustrated,&rdquo; says LendingTree analyst Matt Schulz, &ldquo;but no one should encourage people to walk away from a retailer without paying for something.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Spinning a Gold Scenario
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;What if the U.S. Treasury were to intentionally cause the avalanche in physical gold demand &mdash; spiking prices in order to revalue its gold holdings at substantially higher prices?&rdquo; a reader muses.
&ldquo;They could create $2 or $3 trillion of balance sheet headroom to enable the Fed to buy longer-term treasuries managing the long end of the yield curve.
&ldquo;Combined with the Fed bringing down the overnight rate and the GENIUS Act creating demand for short-term Treasuries, borrowing costs for consumers, businesses and the U.S. government could be reduced substantially.
&ldquo;If done before the midterm elections, it could be the answer to the whole affordability conversation (until the inevitable inflation sets in later).&rdquo;
Dave responds: Can&rsquo;t rule anything out, I suppose.
That said, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been fairly clear. He got a lot of buzz earlier this year when he promised the administration was hatching a scheme to &ldquo;monetize the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet for the American people.&rdquo;
Asked later about whether that included revaluing the gold &mdash; still officially on the Treasury&rsquo;s books at $42.22 an ounce &mdash; he said that&rsquo;s &ldquo;not what I had in mind.&rdquo;
Plus, a high gold price almost always correlates with a lack of confidence in either the U.S. dollar, U.S. Treasury debt &mdash; or both. That&rsquo;s probably not the message the administration wants to telegraph, however unintentionally.
Still, there&rsquo;s no shortage of other catalysts to trigger a supply squeeze. Keep stacking!

FMF-Issue-12-08-25(Featured)

Change We Must 

fmf hero 120525

Sorry, No $20K Pickup Truck for You

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />The Silver Squeeze of 2025 (Update)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Silver has officially broken out again, and depending on which charts you&rsquo;re looking at, the next target is either $71 or $77,&rdquo; colleague Sean Ring writes in our sister e-letter The Rude Awakening.
Now that the white metal has broken through $60 for the first time, the mainstream is starting to notice.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And the mainstream takes are oh-so-predictable. 
&ldquo;A mix of forces are boosting silver, including the weakened dollar, tariff politics and supply shortages,&rdquo; says The Washington Post. &ldquo;Especially critical in recent weeks, though, is the growing expectation that the Federal Reserve will announce another rate cut this Wednesday as the U.S. economy continues to slow down. Analysts say that&rsquo;s likely to further pressure the dollar lower while lifting silver &mdash; a classic safe-haven asset &mdash; even higher.&rdquo;
The BBC: &ldquo;Investors tend to move money into precious metals like gold and silver as interest rates come down and the U.S. dollar weakens. The U.S. central bank is widely expected to cut its main interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday.&rdquo;
Seriously? Tariffs? The Fed?
The Fed embarks on a rate-cutting cycle every few years and there&rsquo;s almost zero correlation with the price of precious metals. The Fed cut rates steadily during the second half of 2019 and the price stayed mired under $20.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;When the D.C. deep state elite start talking about a precious metal move, it means that they must be feeling the seismicity,&rdquo; observes Paradigm&rsquo;s metals-and-mining authority Byron King.
The reality is that this move has been &ldquo;decades in the making, with the kickoff under Biden and grabbing Russian assets.&rdquo;
For sure. We can&rsquo;t say it often enough: Freezing the dollar assets of Russia&rsquo;s central bank in 2022 touched off a scramble for gold among the world&rsquo;s central banks. As Jim Rickards often reminds us, &ldquo;Gold is a physical nondigital asset that cannot be stolen, frozen or seized provided it is in safe storage.&rdquo;
It was inevitable silver would catch up to gold&rsquo;s move &mdash; and then surpass it. That&rsquo;s how it always goes during an epic precious-metals rally.
Byron points out another factor that files under the mainstream radar &mdash; the industrialization of China. All those solar panels they&rsquo;re making for the rest of the world? They need silver!
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Those are long-term factors, however. In the short term, a &ldquo;silver squeeze&rdquo; is still underway.
We described the dynamics <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/silver-rumors">last Thursday</a> &mdash; silver being loaded on cargo jets for transport out of London and into New York and Shanghai. Demand for physical metal is catching up with the demand for silver futures contracts on the Comex in New York. Lease rates on physical silver are through the roof.
Six days later, there&rsquo;s no sign of the squeeze letting up.
&ldquo;A steady, orderly rise would tell us the market is adjusting to new fundamentals,&rdquo; says Sean Ring. &ldquo;But this isn&rsquo;t orderly. It smells like fear. It feels like a squeeze. And it carries the subtle warning that the plumbing behind the scenes is clogging up&hellip;
&ldquo;Silver lease rates are still elevated versus normal, with very short tenors reportedly in the midteens to several tens of percent annualized, compared with a long-run &lsquo;normal&rsquo; well under 1% per year.
&ldquo;Deliverable inventories on major exchanges are shrinking at a pace we haven&rsquo;t seen since the 2011 squeeze. And the usual liquidity providers are stepping back because the spreads are too unpredictable to quote safely.
&ldquo;When a bullion bank bleeds, it doesn&rsquo;t show up on CNBC. It shows up in the market microstructure. Banks that normally dominate the market start behaving like they&rsquo;re afraid of taking the wrong side of the trade.
&ldquo;If silver keeps rising in this jagged, disorderly pattern, someone is getting crushed behind the curtain. And once a bank is cornered, the problem is no longer price volatility, but systemic risk.&rdquo;
Word.
Back to the chart action: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll stick with $71 for now, and there it&rsquo;ll take a breather,&rdquo; Sean says. &ldquo;Once silver gets watered and fed, $102 is the next long-term price target.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Bubble Babble
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> When The New York Times frets on its front page about an AI bubble, you can be confident there&rsquo;s still ample time before the bubble bursts.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/440S92jYzxvIPKPvDir5VE/f9d4a781f9a0bf224139278a39f712a6/FMF-Issue-12-10-25_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&ldquo;Share prices of some AI companies have risen dramatically in a short time,&rdquo; says the article accompanying that headline &mdash; &ldquo;and tech companies are spending billions to build data centers and microchip plants to power the boom.
&ldquo;While investors and analysts see good reasons to justify the exuberance behind the nearly 50% increase in the S&amp;P 500 over the past two years, some warn that current valuations still rest on a big bet on the future.&rdquo;
You want to know when the AI bubble will burst?
When the mainstream stops publishing articles like this and adopts the narrative that the AI economy has put the stock market on a permanently higher trajectory and trees grow to the sky.
We&rsquo;re not there yet.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Ironically, the Times article acknowledges as much &mdash; invoking the December 1996 remark by Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan about &ldquo;irrational exuberance&rdquo; in internet stocks.
Greenspan wasn&rsquo;t wrong &mdash; but he was early, and you wouldn&rsquo;t have wanted to bet against the dot-coms. The S&amp;P 500 doubled in the three years following Greenspan&rsquo;s warning. Only then came the inevitable collapse.
As John Maynard Keynes once said, &ldquo;The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In fact, if you want to use the dot-com bubble and bust as your guide, there&rsquo;s still a long way to go.
Here&rsquo;s a chart of the Nasdaq composite index from Bespoke Investment Group. It shows the dot-com rally then and the AI rally now.
The starting point then was the release of the Netscape Navigator web browser and the starting point now is the release of ChatGPT 3.5.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6ktljmbXWsV4WQlHo1rqXu/bea025e39e81033059678e51a7166a3a/FMF-Issue-12-10-25_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
The parallels &mdash; at least so far &mdash; are eerie. Notice the dip in the red line coinciding with the market&rsquo;s 5% pullback last month. There was a similar pullback in late 1997 coinciding with a currency crisis in Asia.
If past is prologue, a steeper pullback is on the horizon next summer and fall. Back in 1998 the catalyst was the Russian government defaulting on its debt &mdash; which took down the U.S. hedge fund Long Term Capital Management.
And then comes the blowoff top in 2027.
No guarantees, but that&rsquo;s how it&rsquo;s shaken out for the last three years. We&rsquo;ll check in on this chart from time to time during 2026&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As for today, Mr. Market is marking time until the Federal Reserve makes its next call on interest rates.
As mentioned yesterday, nearly everyone expects the Fed to trim the fed funds rate another quarter percentage point this afternoon. The drama lies in how much dissent there is among the members of the Fed&rsquo;s Open Market Committee, and how Fed Chair Jerome Powell spins that dissent during his post-decision press conference. (As always, we&rsquo;ll follow up tomorrow with the help of Jim Rickards.)
At last check the S&amp;P 500 is pancake flat relative to yesterday&rsquo;s close, sitting at 6,841. The Dow is slightly in the green, the Nasdaq slightly in the red.
While silver continues to hold the line on $60, gold is struggling to hold onto the $4,200 level. As for digital nondollar assets, Bitcoin remains over $92,000 and Ethereum has climbed over $3,300.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Venezuela: Action Imminent?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Oil has sunk under $58 for the first time this month, even as it appears Washington is closer to making some sort of military move on Venezuela.
After several days docked in the Virgin Islands, the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford has made its way back toward Venezuela.
Yesterday, two U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighter jets were spotted by flight trackers deep inside the Gulf of Venezuela &mdash; perhaps trying to light up Venezuelan radar. The Pentagon is spinning it as a &ldquo;routine training flight.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2sVyvRiCPC5Z9glFyed0Ta/2878c778c6df1e54b9d44a63e1f75d2d/FMF-Issue-12-10-25_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
As we laid out last month, an American regime-change op in Venezuela has <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/venezuela-its-not-about-drugs">nothing to do with drugs</a> and everything to do with oil and other natural resources. As we also said last month, public support for regime change is <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/only-3x-in-market-history#3">sorely lacking</a>. And unlike in the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003, there&rsquo;s been no sustained propaganda campaign to generate such support.
Trump is refusing to rule out a ground invasion, but as long as support remains lacking, it seems unlikely.
More likely are other options he&rsquo;s said to have reviewed &mdash; sending in troops to capture airfields and oil wells, or perhaps dispatching special forces to capture or kill President Nicolas Maduro.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And then what?
&ldquo;In my estimation, it is an inexplicably stupid and highly risk-laden undertaking to try to insert SOFs [special operations] and Marines,&rdquo; tweets the military analyst William Schryver.
&ldquo;And, notwithstanding the fact that Venezuela is a minor military power, they do possess a handful of potent tools capable of inflicting damage against the U.S. Navy and U.S. aircraft.&rdquo;
Even if no harm comes to U.S. troops, &ldquo;a military intervention in the region is likely to have the opposite effect as intended &mdash; it could spur a massive refugee crisis, elevate anarchic narco groups and tempt China to quietly intervene to make Washington waste its time,&rdquo; says Curt Mills, editor of The American Conservative.
Sounds a little like Libya &mdash; where Barack Obama pulled off regime change in 2011, deposing Col. Muammar Gaddafi. It unleashed a massive refugee crisis in Europe and to this day there are still rival governments fighting for control of Libya&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Thought for the Day
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Ahead of today&rsquo;s Fed decision and the power struggle over Fed policy, a timely reminder&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/17EicUqc7j7bzMkNs4VrdM/eed96b768173c17a04bec1d201c5ed00/FMF-Issue-12-10-25_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Canadian Liquor, Tax-Resisting Heroine
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Alberta liquor isn't fully privatized,&rdquo; writes a reader from Canada&rsquo;s energy capital after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/wall-streets-witch-doctors">yesterday&rsquo;s </a><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/wall-streets-witch-doctors">5 Bullets</a>.
&ldquo;We have AGLC &mdash; Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis. &lsquo;AGLC controls the importation, manufacture, sale, possession, storage, distribution and use of liquor in Alberta.&rsquo;
&ldquo;The actual liquor stores are privately owned. I think Saskatchewan is similar.&nbsp;
&ldquo;It was our premier's choice to not do something stupid. Free trade is better for everyone.
Diplomacy (lost art) is better for everyone, and really, how do you win against a country 10 times our size that our country has become fat and lazy depending on, with Mr. Trump as leader?&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> After the subject of &ldquo;shadow work&rdquo; came up <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/wall-streets-witch-doctors">in yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>, a reader weighed in with a blast from the past.
&ldquo;The late patriot Vivien Kellems refused to collect taxes on that basis, citing it for what it is: INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Wow, it&rsquo;s been decades since I first read about her in Murray Rothbard&rsquo;s For a New Liberty.
Born in 1896, Kellems founded her own company in 1927, manufacturing custom grips to move electrical cables through tight spaces.
But what put her on the map was her resistance to Washington&rsquo;s &ldquo;unfunded mandate&rdquo; requiring employers to collect withholding taxes &mdash; implemented in the 1940s as a wartime measure, but kept in place after World War II was over.
(Amazing how that works, right?)
Wrote Rothbard: &ldquo;As the intrepid Connecticut industrialist Vivien Kellems argued years ago, the employer is forced to expend time, labor and money in the business of deducting and transmitting his employees' taxes to the federal and state governments&mdash;yet the employer is not recompensed for this expenditure.&rdquo;
Kellems herself was more pithy: "If they wanted me to be their agent, they'd have to pay me, and I want a badge."
She fought the feds from 1948 all the way up to her death in 1975. Her heirs had to fork over $265,000 in back taxes.
Shortly before she died, Kellems told the Los Angeles Times, &ldquo;Our tax law is a 1,598-page hydra-headed monster and I'm going to attack and attack and attack until I have ironed out every fault in it."
We&rsquo;re not sure what yardstick Kellems was using to arrive at that total&hellip; but conservative estimates put it between 4,200 and 6,900 pages now.
And that&rsquo;s just the statues, not the regulations and case law&hellip;

FMF-Issue-12-10-25(Featured)

Silver Squeeze 2025 (Update)

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Here We Go Again
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The rumor surfaces every few years. And every few years we have to smack it down here in these virtual pages.
The rumor has to do with an imminent catalyst for a steep jump in precious metals prices.
Fair warning: We&rsquo;re going to get a bit into the weeds today. But we owe it to you to do a little debunking just in case you run across this rumor on your favorite social media feed.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />In recent days the rumor has caught on again because of the tightness in the silver market we mentioned on Tuesday. 
Since October, huge quantities of physical silver have been moving around the world. The Grok AI engine, drawing from nearly a dozen articles in the business press, summarizes it like so&hellip;
<blockquote>In October 2025, a severe supply squeeze gripped London's silver market &mdash; the world's largest trading hub &mdash; triggered by earlier outflows of metal to New York amid U.S. tariff uncertainties, compounded by surging global demand from industrial uses, ETF inflows and seasonal buying in India ahead of Diwali.</blockquote>
<blockquote>This created a historic arbitrage opportunity, drawing nearly 54 million troy ounces (over 1,600 tons) from U.S. Comex warehouses (down 697 tons) and China's Shanghai Futures Exchange (17 million ounces withdrawn), replenishing London vaults with the largest inflow in nine years and easing local borrowing costs from over 30% to around 5%.</blockquote>
<blockquote>However, this redistribution strained other hubs, with Shanghai inventories plummeting to 920 tons &mdash; the lowest since 2015 &mdash; amid ongoing structural deficits exceeding 600 million ounces since 2021, keeping one-month lease rates elevated and underscoring silver's persistent tightness.</blockquote>
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />This &ldquo;silver squeeze&rdquo; is what propelled the spot silver price from about $46 only two months ago to over $57 this morning.
Demand for physical metal is catching up with the demand in the &ldquo;paper silver&rdquo; market &mdash; that is, silver futures traded on the Comex in New York.
For the time being, traders are content to roll their contracts forward or take a cash payout when those futures expire. But hypothetically, they have the right to demand delivery in physical metal.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Predictably, several observers of the precious metals markets are stepping forward with lurid predictions that all hell is about to break loose.
Case in point: Bill Holter, a veteran of A.G. Edwards among other firms. In a recent interview on the USAWatchdog podcast, he points out that annual global silver production of about 850 million ounces isn&rsquo;t enough to keep up with demand.
&ldquo;The rumor is somebody has put in a $20 billion order, which would mean 400 million ounces,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;If that is the case, that order cannot be met, and that will create shark-infested waters... If somebody stands for delivery and it looks like it may be difficult for them to get delivery, then everybody is going to stand for delivery because they know that their contracts are worthless.&rdquo;
From there, &ldquo;One day you will see a huge [price] spike, but markets won&rsquo;t open after that. That will cascade. What will happen is all the Comex contracts for both silver and gold will default.&rdquo;
Silver futures would be effectively worthless &mdash; while real hold-in-your-hands silver would be worth hundreds of dollars an ounce.
But there&rsquo;s a problem &mdash; several problems, actually &mdash; with this scenario. Read on&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />&ldquo;Stand for Delivery&rdquo; (Yeah, Good Luck With That)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;For years, gold bugs implored futures traders to &lsquo;stand for delivery&rsquo; on the Comex,&rdquo; Paradigm macro maven Jim Rickards wrote in 2016 &mdash; when rumors of this sort were rippling through the gold market.
&ldquo;If every long in the futures market put in a notification that they wanted to take physical delivery instead of closing out or rolling over their contracts, the result would be one of the greatest short squeezes and price spikes since &lsquo;Big Jim&rsquo; Fisk and Jay Gould tried to corner the private gold market in 1869. (Fisk and Gould&rsquo;s corner failed when the U.S. Treasury unexpectedly made public gold available to bail out the shorts.)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;But this scenario is unlikely to play out in the way the gold bugs wish, for several reasons,&rdquo; Jim went on.
&ldquo;The first is that the Comex has emergency powers to prevent longs from taking delivery in a way that disrupts the orderly functioning of the market. The Comex rule book makes it clear that a futures exchange is for hedging, price discovery and legal speculation, but is not a source of supply. (Physical delivery is permitted, but only enough to keep the paper price &lsquo;honest.&rsquo; The irony, of course, is that the paper price is anything but honest, due to manipulation.)
&ldquo;Another rule allows Comex officials to change the rules as needed in emergencies (something the Hunt brothers experienced when they tried to corner the silver market in 1980). The fact that longs know they cannot take delivery in the end is a major deterrent to the attempt.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />There&rsquo;s one more reason the precious metals longs don&rsquo;t squeeze the precious metals shorts. Jim sums it up in two words: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s illegal.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Most major participants in the gold market (banks, dealers and hedge funds) are regulated by one or more of the Federal Reserve, U.S. Treasury, SEC or CFTC,&rdquo; he explains. (And he&rsquo;s been a lawyer for banks, dealers and hedge funds, so he&rsquo;d know.)
&ldquo;Applicable laws contain strict anti-fraud and anti-manipulation rules, including jail time in cases of willful and knowing violations.&rdquo;
So a rogue hedge fund manager out there might want to call BS on the whole Comex scheme&hellip; but he thinks better of it, lest the full weight of Uncle Sam&rsquo;s prosecutorial apparatus comes crashing down on him.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Don&rsquo;t get the wrong idea: Precious metals could still experience a super-spike &mdash; just not for the &ldquo;stand for delivery&rdquo; reasons you hear from the usual suspects.
It comes back to &ldquo;avalanche theory&rdquo; &mdash; Jim&rsquo;s popularization of the science called complexity theory.
&ldquo;A single snowflake,&rdquo; he reminds us, &ldquo;can turn a seemingly stable snowpack into a roaring avalanche that destroys everything in its path. Once the snowpack is arranged in an unstable way (like the gold market today), a single snowflake can unleash carnage. Of course, a single snowflake is so small you never see it coming.
&ldquo;What this means is that the super-spike in gold [and silver] prices will not come from any of the obvious sources but from an unexpected source.&rdquo;
It could be the bankruptcy of a medium-size gold dealer. It could be lawmakers in Washington talking about new reporting requirements for gold dealers. Or it could have nothing to do with gold: It could be a war or another pandemic that frightens people into safeguarding wealth.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter,&rdquo; Jim sums up. &ldquo;Once the avalanche begins, there&rsquo;s no stopping it.
At that point, the hedge funds can demand physical delivery of gold without fear of prosecution. If a hedge fund tries to start an avalanche, it&rsquo;s manipulation. But if the avalanche starts from another source, then a hedge fund piling on is &lsquo;normal&rsquo; market conduct.
&ldquo;Since every gold market participant knows there&rsquo;s not enough physical gold to go around, everyone will demand physical gold at once. No one wants to be left holding the bag.
"What happens when there's a panic and everyone demands their gold at once?" he goes on. "And how does this end?
"There are a few ways&hellip; and none of them good.&rdquo;
Unless you have physical gold and silver in your possession already. Act accordingly.
Now on to other matters&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Bad News Is Good News (Jobs)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />In the absence of official government jobs data, Mr. Market and the Federal Reserve are glomming onto whatever private-sector data can be found. And it&rsquo;s all bad.
Because of the 43-day &ldquo;partial government shutdown,&rdquo; the Bureau of Labor Statistics won&rsquo;t even try to assemble an October jobs report. And the November numbers &mdash; which ordinarily would come out tomorrow &mdash; won&rsquo;t be released until Tuesday, Dec. 16.
That&rsquo;s after the Federal Reserve makes its next decision about short-term interest rates on Wednesday the 10th.
Yesterday we mentioned how the payroll firm ADP found that private-sector employers cut 32,000 jobs in November &mdash; contrasting with expectations for 20,000 jobs added.
Today brings another discouraging number: The Challenger Job-Cut Report from Challenger, Gray &amp; Christmas finds that U.S. employers cut 71,321 positions in November.
To be clear, this report does not attempt to figure out how many jobs might have been added. Still, it&rsquo;s concerning that this job-cut number is up 24% from November 2024.
And the cuts took place in every industry group other than utilities.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But on the theory that a weakening job market translates to Fed interest-rate cuts, stocks have rallied both yesterday and today.
All of the major U.S. stock indexes are in the green as we write, the S&amp;P 500 up a tenth of a percent at 6,856. The S&amp;P is only a half percent away from reclaiming its record close notched on Oct. 29.
And why not? Activity in the futures markets shows an 87% likelihood the Fed will trim the benchmark fed funds rate next week &mdash; which would be the third cut since September.
Elsewhere, gold is holding steady just over $4,200 &mdash; but Mr. Slammy came for silver big-time today. The $57 handle we mentioned off the top? That&rsquo;s down nearly $1.50 from yesterday. Crude is up over 1% but still under $60.
Crypto is consolidating after yesterday&rsquo;s big gains, Bitcoin a little over $92,000 and Ethereum at $3,163.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Economic Warfare Blowback
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Now a follow-up to <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/this-is-how-the-dollar-dies" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tuesday&rsquo;s edition</a> &mdash; all about governments around the world thumbing their noses at the economic dictates of Washington, D.C.
In October, the Trump administration tried to amp up the pressure on Russia to reach a cease-fire with Ukraine by imposing sanctions on Russia&rsquo;s two biggest oil producers &mdash; Rosneft and Lukoil.
Last month, the Treasury Department issued a statement crowing that the sanctions &ldquo;are having their intended effect of dampening Russian revenues by lowering the price of Russian oil and therefore the country's ability to fund its war effort against Ukraine."
Not so much, says a tweet from Bloomberg&rsquo;s straight-shooting energy and commodities reporter Javier Blas&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6NcE5yj3Y9dHTusk4BglpT/db8f46128be3a99b6c3faa0741144e59/javier_blas_tweet.png" alt="Javier Blas tweet" />
Where there&rsquo;s a will there&rsquo;s a way, right?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Meanwhile, Russia&rsquo;s President Vladimir Putin got an exceptionally warm welcome today from India&rsquo;s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Modi greeted Putin at the New Delhi airport &mdash; something he&rsquo;s done only a handful of times with other heads of state since becoming prime minister in 2014 &mdash; before piling into a Toyota Fortuner to head into the city.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5so0YEoONPc08GSVGp0CD9/e17df352ed22d1c6e1a64056438c53f2/modi_putin.png" alt="Modi and Putin" />
Best of friends [as posted on the @narendramodi X account]
It was three months ago when our Jim Rickards went semi-viral on X with <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/tariffs-on-trial/#2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a post spotlighting the smiles and handshakes</a> among Putin, Modi and China&rsquo;s President Xi Jinping at a summit in China. Together they&rsquo;re forming a formidable anti-Washington bloc capable of withstanding sanctions and other forms of economic warfare.
It was an avoidable outcome if Donald Trump and Joe Biden had exercised smart diplomacy &mdash; but it was not to be.
Now, as mentioned here Tuesday, Washington imposes a 50% tariff on imports from India to punish India for its Russian oil purchases&hellip; and India just keeps on keepin&rsquo; on.
And that Tuesday edition continues to draw reader reaction&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: &ldquo;My Constructive Suggestion&hellip;&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />For a second day running, we&rsquo;re taking heat from a reader who interpreted <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/this-is-how-the-dollar-dies" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tuesday&rsquo;s </a><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/this-is-how-the-dollar-dies" target="_blank" rel="noopener">5 Bullets</a> as a slam on the current president.
&ldquo;It became quite clear throughout the article that there is a strong critical stance taken regarding a particular political figure,&rdquo; she writes.
&ldquo;While personal opinions are certainly valid, I believe some of the language used, specifically when addressing political affiliations or leadership, might be perceived as overtly partisan rather than purely objective or analytical.
&ldquo;In my experience, many professional audiences and clients hold a wide range of political views. When professional content incorporates what could be interpreted as strongly politically charged commentary or critiques, there's a risk of inadvertently alienating a significant portion of your readership or client base.
&ldquo;Maintaining a degree of political neutrality or presenting observations in a more universally acceptable and less confrontational manner can often help in fostering broader appeal and ensuring your professional message is received without immediate political filters.
&ldquo;My constructive suggestion would be to consider moderating the explicit political leanings in your professional writing.
&ldquo;This approach could help in preserving an image of impartiality and ensure that your valuable insights reach and resonate with an even wider, more diverse audience, without risking the alienation of potential or existing clients who may hold differing political perspectives.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Thank you for your feedback.
So a couple of things: One, it&rsquo;s impossible to assess markets and the economy without assessing the actions of politicians and central bankers. As it happens, almost all of them are fools, knaves or both &mdash; drunk with hubris that they can push a button here, pull a lever there and get a predictable result with no second-order effects or unintended consequences.
In that light, I&rsquo;m thoroughly impartial &mdash; my contempt is universal. Thus, in the current politically polarized climate I&rsquo;m going to offend someone no matter what I say.
Inevitably there will be &ldquo;drive-by&rdquo; readers who get the idea I take one side or another &mdash; and there&rsquo;s nothing I can do about that.
The alternative is to crank out material that&rsquo;s bland, vanilla, milquetoast &mdash; which is a sure way to put myself out of work!

fmf hero 120425

Silver Rumors

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />It&rsquo;s Not Too Late
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Usually by the time a story makes it into the corporate media, it&rsquo;s too late to make any money off it. 
After all, first-mover advantage goes to those capable of acting on information that might be public &mdash; but isn&rsquo;t widely known. That&rsquo;s how you buy quality stocks at a bargain price.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Today&rsquo;s Bullet No. 1 is an exception to the rule&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/8aemzYFvP9JdKucwrM0RA/e849959fc0e18ea7b7700e0f5e339ceb/NYT_headline.png" alt="new york times headline" />
There it is in yesterday&rsquo;s New York Times &mdash; front page, above the fold. &ldquo;The Trump administration is snapping up ownership shares of private companies it deems essential to national security.
&ldquo;It is an unusual new strategy that has already committed more than $10 billion in taxpayer funds and shows little sign of slowing.&rdquo;
Not exactly news if you keep up with these 5 Bullets each day. It&rsquo;s especially not news if you&rsquo;re a Jim Rickards subscriber.
Even before Donald Trump returned to office last January, Jim anticipated the new administration would aggressively tap into the energy and mineral wealth underneath federal lands &mdash; a $150 trillion bounty that Jim dubbed the &ldquo;American Birthright.&rdquo;
Then in late April came a variation on the theme&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />That&rsquo;s when we spotlighted a statement by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum &mdash; in which he said upfront that the U.S. government was looking to invest in mining companies.
Or as he put it, an &ldquo;equity investment in each of these companies that&rsquo;s taking on China in critical minerals.&rdquo;
The first such acquisition came on July 10 &mdash; when the Pentagon took a 15% stake in the rare-earth firm MP Materials.
Several Paradigm editors, taking Jim&rsquo;s &ldquo;Birthright&rdquo; cue, had recommended MP Materials in anticipation of a development just like this. Members of Altucher&rsquo;s True Alpha profited the most &mdash; 918% playing MP call options.
Then came a flurry of other government acquisitions &mdash; several in the rare earth space but also the 10% stake in Intel and a &ldquo;golden share&rdquo; of U.S. Steel that gives the government veto power over many boardroom decisions.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />It&rsquo;s hard to overemphasize what a departure from modern norms we&rsquo;re looking at here.
The Times acknowledges as much:
<blockquote>Prior administrations have tried to speed the development of sectors like semiconductors and clean energy with grants, loans, tariffs and other policies. But taking equity stakes in companies is incredibly rare. During the 2008 financial crisis, the government took over shares in companies that were faltering or whose collapse posed broader financial risks, including General Motors and Chrysler, along with the giant insurer AIG.</blockquote>
<blockquote>The Trump administration has taken a more aggressive and opportunistic tack.</blockquote>
Our purpose today is not to analyze the right and wrong of the policy. With this administration, as with any other, we seek to follow the money.
And while the best profit opportunities are usually gone by the time the mainstream notices them, that&rsquo;s not the case this time around.
Readers of Jim Rickards&rsquo; premium advisory The Situation Report are clued in to a select group of companies perfectly positioned to start reaping outsized gains from the Trump administration&rsquo;s buying spree.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />When Google Was Cheap
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />No longer can Google parent Alphabet be called a &ldquo;cheap&rdquo; stock.
Colleague Davis Wilson of our sister e-letter The Million Mission turned heads last spring when he called GOOG &ldquo;the most underappreciated Big Tech stock on the planet.&rdquo;
At the time, Alphabet&rsquo;s market cap was $2 trillion &mdash; and he figured the company was worth $2.75 trillion. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a 27.5% discount to my conservatively estimated sum-of-the-parts valuation.&rdquo;
Now?
Well, GOOG has nearly doubled since then &mdash; to a market cap of $3.8 trillion. The company is finally getting credit for developing a credible challenger to ChatGPT (Gemini). Further, it&rsquo;s looking to take the high-end chips it builds in-house and start selling them to other customers (in other words, moving in on territory that now belongs almost entirely to Nvidia).
At this stage, applying the same methodology he did last spring, Davis says GOOG is now fairly valued&hellip;.
<ul>
<li>$2.6 trillion for the core business (search, YouTube, etc.)</li>
<li>$1 trillion for its AI ventures and the Waymo autonomous-vehicle platform</li>
<li>$500 billion for its miscellaneous operations, including chipmaking.</li>
</ul>
In other words, GOOG is no longer cheap. &ldquo;The upside from mispricing has largely played out,&rdquo; he tells his Million Mission readers &mdash; &ldquo;and I am now starting to look for other opportunities that haven't yet been recognized by the market.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />It&rsquo;s another Magnificent 7 stock that&rsquo;s got Mr. Market&rsquo;s attention this morning.
Microsoft is down 1.5% after reports that the company has cut its growth targets for AI software sales.
But MSFT&rsquo;s woes aren&rsquo;t dragging down the market as a whole. The S&amp;P 500 is up a third of a percent to 6,852. The Dow&rsquo;s gain is stronger, the Nasdaq&rsquo;s weaker.
Traders are also shrugging off a discouraging job report: The payroll firm ADP says private-sector employers shed 32,000 jobs this month. Whoops, the typical Wall Street economist was expecting a modest increase of 20,000.
Meanwhile, the government is still catching up on a data backlog from the shutdown: The Federal Reserve reports that industrial production inched 0.1% higher in September, not enough to make up for August&rsquo;s contraction.
For once there&rsquo;s not much to say about precious metals: Gold hovers a little over $4,200 and silver just over $58. Crude is up about 1% to $59.24. Crypto is adding to yesterday&rsquo;s gains &mdash; Bitcoin now over $93,000 and Ethereum back above $3,100.
For more about the job picture, read on&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Where&rsquo;s All the Seasonal Hiring?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Folks looking for part-time work over the holidays are discovering the toughest conditions since the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
The National Retail Federation says retailers expect to hire 265,000-365,000 seasonal workers this year &mdash; down from last year&rsquo;s figure of 442,000. The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray &amp; Christmas also foresees the weakest holiday-hiring season in over 15 years.
"I've never seen the job market like this &mdash; it&rsquo;s pretty crazy,&rdquo; says Nicholas Strahl of Indianapolis. "It doesn't really leave a lot of power for people who just want to get a job, or have a supplement in income,&rdquo; he tells the BBC.
Unlike in previous years, big-box retailers like Walmart and Target have been mute about how many workers they plan to add for the holidays in 2025. At Walmart, current workers are likely to get extra hours before any new hires.
Exactly what the problem is depends on who you talk to. The workforce research firm Revelio Labs says retail job openings were down 22% in October compared with a year earlier.
On the other hand, the Indeed Hiring Lab says the number of openings is about the same as a year ago; the problem is that more people are looking for part-time seasonal work.
This much is certain: "The cautious pace of announcements so far suggests that companies are not betting on a big seasonal surge," says Andy Challenger from Challenger, Gray &amp; Christmas.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Making the internet rounds&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4RZecVP5JlOYp0hi7sFLZr/7fda70bbc508f119455cfe669cbf47d5/billboard_meme.png" alt="Billboard" />
I can personally attest that this photo is not the product of Photoshop or AI. I&rsquo;ve seen the billboard on Wisconsin Highway 29 &mdash; the main east-west drag between the Twin Cities and Green Bay.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Gold, Trump
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Dave, going by yesterday's action in gold and the reaction of silver looks like 1999 again,&rdquo; a reader writes from Canada.
&ldquo;1999 was the year Gordon Brown sold the U.K. taxpayers' gold reserves at the sought-after lowest price available. Brown's policy was to diversify the U.K.'s foreign exchange reserves and create so-called transparency.
&ldquo;In fact it was to bail out a bullion bank caught on the wrong side of a gold-paper bet according to reliable sources who structured the disposition.
&ldquo;Mr. James Rickards in his presentations has often used the word &lsquo;suckered&rsquo; when referring to the U.K.'s disastrous loss of half of its gold reserves.
&ldquo;So here we are again with a short position massively underwater in the paper silver bets, which reportedly need to be unwound before Dec. 31, 2025. In 1999 it was a bank massively underwater in gold!
&ldquo;Yet silver is not responding to Mr. Slammy and in fact it appears to be looking for a new historical high again!
&ldquo;What happens now, Dave. Will screens go blank and for how long?&rdquo;
Dave responds: Gee, are you referring to the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/28/cme-halts-fx-commodities-futures-trading-after-data-center-issue.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&ldquo;cooling issue&rdquo;</a> at the data centers feeding CME Group &mdash; which then shut down futures trading late last Thursday and into Friday?
There was a lot of social-media chatter on Black Friday that it was all a ruse to suppress the silver price. But if it was, it didn&rsquo;t work!
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;My goodness, you are relentlessly negative about the American economy and President Trump&rsquo;s policies,&rdquo; a reader writes after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/this-is-how-the-dollar-dies" target="_blank" rel="noopener">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>.
&ldquo;I understand the need for objective analysis (anything else is propaganda) but is it really as bad as you suggest? Tariff revenues don&rsquo;t impress you? The unemployment rate, though flawed as a measure of economic health, is still low, and gas prices are down. None of that merits a mention? Did you not think that things needed to be shaken up a bit after four years of leftist political control?
&ldquo;Your writings are very thought-provoking though. I&rsquo;m old, and that&rsquo;s the way we used to treat disagreements, rather than as an excuse to rage and name-call. Keep up the good work.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Thank you for the civil discourse &mdash; which I also value even if I&rsquo;m perhaps not as old as you!
Look, the center-left Democrat wing of the power elite had to be repudiated last year &mdash; as I made clear <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/trump-vs-the-15" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a week after Election Day</a>. But as I also wrote on that occasion, Trump and his people still have to be held accountable.
Be that as it may, the point of yesterday&rsquo;s edition wasn&rsquo;t to pile on Trump.
It was to spotlight a phenomenon that was decades in the making and that neither Trump nor the opposition in D.C. fully appreciate. The law of unintended consequences doesn&rsquo;t care about party affiliation!
P.S. By the way, the subject line on the reader&rsquo;s email was &ldquo;So negative.&rdquo; For anyone who thinks I&rsquo;m too cynical, I direct your attention to <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/9-11-the-financial-crisis-and-covid" target="_blank" rel="noopener">this edition</a> from last spring. The name Trump comes up only in passing&hellip;

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Trump's $10 Billion Buying Spree

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />So Much for Those &ldquo;Punishing&rdquo; Tariffs
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Let&rsquo;s see &mdash; Donald Trump&rsquo;s punitive tariffs on India took effect shortly before Labor Day. How effective are they?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/684kMQBJ3ci5PSnkZiTYV/49d78d01350125618d60bbbeaaaaa9f4/Reutersheadline.png" alt="Reuters Headline" />
That effective, huh?
As you might recall, over the summer Trump imposed a 50% tariff on imported goods from India &mdash; half of which was meant to punish India for its imports of Russian oil.
India and China have been more than happy to buy the Russian oil that Europeans have sworn off ever since Russia&rsquo;s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Trump and his team are displeased: White House adviser Peter Navarro says India&rsquo;s purchases are &ldquo;funding Putin&rsquo;s war machine.&rdquo;
Last week, the Reuters newswire reported that India&rsquo;s purchases of Russian oil in November were likely to total 1.86 million barrels per day &mdash; up sharply from October, indeed the highest monthly total since July.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Across the non-Western world, the message governments are sending to Washington, D.C. these days is: We&rsquo;re done with being bossed around by you.
For U.S. leaders, it was fun while it lasted &mdash; an era that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and America&rsquo;s ascent to the status of sole superpower.
&ldquo;What we say goes,&rdquo; President George H.W. Bush said during the Gulf War in 1991.
In retrospect, it&rsquo;s safe to say that era ended with Joe Biden&rsquo;s unprecedented sanctions on Russia after the Ukraine invasion in 2022. Washington froze the dollar-based assets of Russia&rsquo;s central bank. Leaders of every government in the world on less-than-friendly terms with Washington started to ask, Are we next?
Ever since, central banks have been accumulating gold at a record pace. It&rsquo;s no coincidence the gold price has been setting records routinely since 2023. We can&rsquo;t show this chart often enough&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5pVBWUP9xWBa2I7OBGOZfF/2ea7a665fbba825ebdb335b1579844c2/5Bullets_Chart_110525.png" alt="Chart" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Now the blowback is taking place worldwide &mdash; with Russia setting the pace. 
As our own Jim Rickards has reminded us for years, Russia&rsquo;s gold reserves as a percentage of its economy are the biggest in the world.
That&rsquo;s enabled Moscow to withstand the sanctions: As Jim wrote his Strategic Intelligence readers yesterday, &ldquo;Russia has made almost as much mark-to-market profit on its gold (about $200 billion) as the U.S. and EU have threatened to steal from Russia&rsquo;s cash reserves (also about $200 billion).&rdquo;
The newest development is this: Russia&rsquo;s central bank says that &ldquo;its sales and purchases of gold in the domestic market for the budget reserve, the National Wealth Fund (NWF), have been increasing in recent years due to the enhanced liquidity of gold,&rdquo; according to another Reuters report.
<a id="2"></a>&ldquo;In 2023, Russia excluded the U.S. dollar, euro and other Western currencies from the currency structure of its fiscal reserves, which are now held in China's yuan and gold, with target shares of 60% and 40%, respectively.&rdquo;
But it&rsquo;s not just India and Russia (and China) thumbing their nose at Washington. An even more startling example comes from another member of the BRICS constellation of countries.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Brazil: &ldquo;Yeah, We&rsquo;re Just Gonna Ignore Your Sanctions&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Brazil Defied Trump and Won&rdquo; says a not-inaccurate New York Times headline.
Brazil&rsquo;s former president Jair Bolsonaro recently began a 27-year prison sentence for plotting a military coup to stay in office after losing his reelection bid in 2022.
Bolsonaro&rsquo;s fellow populist Donald Trump waged serious economic warfare to prevent this outcome &mdash; demanding the Brazilian authorities drop the charges &mdash; and failed.
One of those weapons was a 50% tariff.
As we pointed out over the summer, it was a novel use of tariffs &mdash; not to &ldquo;level the playing field&rdquo; when it comes to trade, nor to raise revenue for a cash-strapped federal government, but to meddle in the political affairs of other countries.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />In addition, Trump imposed sanctions on Alexandre de Moraes, the Brazilian Supreme Court justice overseeing Bolsonaro&rsquo;s case.
Trump&rsquo;s beef with de Moraes goes beyond the prosecution of Bolsonaro. De Moraes also oversees Brazil&rsquo;s censorship of social media &mdash; exercising extraordinary powers that the Biden administration could only dream of.
Twelve days ago, Trump lifted the stiffest of the tariffs on Brazil &mdash; even though Bolsonaro&rsquo;s fate was sealed.
That included the tariffs on Brazilian beef and coffee. Coincidentally or not, Americans have been paying sharply higher prices for beef and coffee in recent months.
In late October, Trump had a friendly meeting with the man who defeated Bolsonaro in the 2022 elections &mdash; Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. Trump says his ongoing talks with Lula are showing progress.
As for Bolsonaro, Trump says only, &ldquo;That&rsquo;s too bad.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;The Trump administration just crippled one of the U.S.&rsquo; most potent weapons &mdash; its sanctions regime,&rdquo; observes Glenn Greenwald.
Mr. Greenwald, the journalist and civil libertarian, is a U.S. citizen who&rsquo;s lived in Brazil for most of the last two decades.
As he recently tweeted, &ldquo;Some high-up in the [White House and State Department] are still pushing Treasury to enforce these sanctions against Brazilian banks and even U.S. tech firms, but this is the first time a country simply told the U.S. it would ignore sanctions -- and even threatened banks and companies inside its borders with punishments if they abided by U.S. sanctions -- and got away with it completely.
&ldquo;Brazil just created a model for countries to ignore U.S. sanctions by proving that the U.S. won't back up their vows.&rdquo;
And it seems that model is being followed on the other side of the Atlantic. Read on&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Dollars for Oil? Not (Necessarily) In Nigeria
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Nigeria Ignites a Global Rebellion Against the Dollar Rule&rdquo; says a recent headline at the website Front Page Africa.
Perhaps you saw a few weeks ago when Trump issued the following warning on his Truth Social site: &ldquo;If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, &lsquo;guns-a-blazing,&rsquo; to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.&rdquo;
In the same way that drugs are <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/venezuela-its-not-about-drugs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a pretext</a> for Trump to pursue Venezuela&rsquo;s oil reserves, oppression of Christians is a pretext for Trump to pursue Nigeria&rsquo;s oil reserves. Nigeria is Africa&rsquo;s biggest crude producer, and the 15th largest in the world.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />And the Nigerian government is taking halting steps toward accepting payment for oil in currencies other than the U.S. dollar.
In the summer of 2024, Reuters reported that the state oil company NNPC won approval &ldquo;to sell crude in the naira currency to the mega Dangote refinery effective immediately to help ease foreign exchange pressure.&rdquo;
In October of 2024, the country&rsquo;s Federal Executive Council cleared the way for even more widespread sales of oil in the naira.
These aren&rsquo;t broad, sweeping moves &mdash; the reality is that oil buyers have way more dollars than they have naira &mdash; but the symbolism still matters.
At the Front Page Africa site, writer Julius T. Jaesen II makes a direct link to Trump&rsquo;s warnings: &ldquo;President Trump just threatened military action against a sovereign African nation for making an economic decision about its own oil exports... And the most shocking part [is that] Nigeria isn&rsquo;t backing down.
&ldquo;For the first time in decades, we&rsquo;re witnessing an African nation look the United States directly in the eye and say no, not just to our demands but to our threats.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />This Is How the Dollar Dies
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />There&rsquo;s a lot of noise and misunderstanding when it comes to the dollar surrendering its status as the world&rsquo;s reserve currency.
Your editor has been following the &ldquo;de-dollarization&rdquo; phenomenon since 2014 &mdash; the ongoing effort among governments in the Global South to get out from under the dollar&rsquo;s influence.
A lot of internet screamers try to convince you there will be ONE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT any day now in which the dollar will collapse and life as you know it will be over. (The &ldquo;Operation Sandman&rdquo; rumors of 2023 were <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2023/04/04/sandman-dollar-demolition-plot/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">an especially silly example</a>.)
The reality is that de-dollarization is a process, not an event.
Paradigm macro maven Jim Rickards reminds us that it took 30 years for the British pound to surrender its status as the globe&rsquo;s reserve currency to the dollar &mdash; from the outbreak of World War I in 1914 to the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944.
The transition from the French franc to the pound during the 19th century also took many years &mdash; as did the transition from the Dutch guilder to the franc in the 18th century.
A quarter of the way into the 21st century it&rsquo;s still hard to envision what the new reserve currency might be: The euro was never a credible competitor to the dollar and China&rsquo;s government imposes so many restrictions on the yuan that it can&rsquo;t mount a credible challenge, either.
At best, economists can merely foresee that the dollar&rsquo;s share of global transactions will continue its steady decline.
But this much is already apparent: The BRICS nations are developing an alternative payments system, bypassing the dollar, with gold as its foundation.
Between that and continued central bank gold buying (see the chart above)... the dollar price of gold can only go higher from here. Act accordingly.
And don&rsquo;t overlook silver. That&rsquo;s Bullet No. 5 as we turn our attention to the market action today&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Waking up to Silver Realities
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The mainstream is starting to figure out that global silver supplies are tight.
&ldquo;A record amount of silver flowed into London in October to ease a historic squeeze in the world&rsquo;s biggest trading hub for the metal,&rdquo; Bloomberg reports, &ldquo;but this has put other centers under pressure. Inventories in warehouses linked to the Shanghai Futures Exchange recently hit the lowest in nearly a decade, and the cost of borrowing the metal over one month remains elevated.&rdquo;
The article cites an analyst at the big French bank BNP Paribas noting that the gold-silver ratio &mdash; literally the price of gold divided by the price of silver &mdash; has sunk to near 70, a level last seen in 2020.
Right, but what does that actually mean?
&ldquo;The gold-silver ratio has fallen to levels that force systematic funds to rebalance into silver,&rdquo; says colleague Sean Ring in today&rsquo;s Rude Awakening. <a href="https://rudeawakening.info/posts/the-curious-case-of-the-disappearing-silver" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sean&rsquo;s article</a> &mdash; along with Adam Sharp&rsquo;s Daily Reckoning <a href="https://dailyreckoning.com/the-path-to-200-oz-silver/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">yesterday</a> &mdash; fill in the blanks the mainstream still hasn&rsquo;t figured out. Adam sees a path to $200 silver, while Sean says $100 is inevitable.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />In the meantime, the white metal is holding on to most of yesterday&rsquo;s big gains at $57.85.
But gold is losing ground &mdash; off $40 to $4,190. And the mining stocks are correcting sharply, the HUI index down 3% at last check.
As for the broad stock market, the major indexes are trying to regain yesterday&rsquo;s lost ground. At last check the S&amp;P 500 is up a third of a percent to 6,836.
Crypto is rebounding smartly, Bitcoin back above $91,000 and Ethereum a hair over $3,000 again.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />We&rsquo;ll wrap it up with a deep thought for the day&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4NIeUnBcD7iqlQhb0LBjZF/375f69f39e58534eee80b244dd5809d6/InternetHippoX.png" alt="Internet Hippo" width="350px" />

fmf hero 120225

This Is How the Dollar Dies

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Not Just the Mag 7
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />For all the sturm and drang in the stock market during November&hellip; it ended on Friday with a new all-time monthly high.
After Friday&rsquo;s holiday-abbreviated trading session, the S&amp;P 500 rested at 6,849. Granted, that was only microscopically higher than October&rsquo;s monthly close of 6,840 &mdash; but small margins like these matter when looking at historical stock market data.
&ldquo;This makes it seven months in a row&rdquo; that the market has ended the month higher than it began &mdash; &ldquo;something that has happened only about 15 times&rdquo; since 1950, according to Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta.
&ldquo;Looking out three months, six months and one year later - this has been a very good sign for the stock market.&rdquo;
Figures from Carson Investment Research show that when the S&amp;P 500 notches seven straight months in the green, it&rsquo;s up an average 3.9% after three months&hellip; 7.0% after six months&hellip; and 9.3% after 12 months.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />What&rsquo;s more, the story is not all about the Magnificent 7.
The Mag 7 &mdash; Nvidia, Microsoft, Google/Alphabet, Facebook/Meta, Amazon, Apple and Tesla &mdash;
have powered much of the stock market&rsquo;s rally from the S&amp;P&rsquo;s lows in October 2022. Which makes sense when you consider that those companies account for about 36% of the index&rsquo;s market cap.
But if you look at the S&amp;P minus the Mag 7, it also ended November at an all-time high. &ldquo;This is real stock market strength,&rdquo; says Enrique.
In addition, the S&amp;P&rsquo;s &ldquo;advance/decline line&rdquo; registered an all-time high. That means the share price of a growing number of S&amp;P 500 companies is rising rather than falling.
&ldquo;Strong breadth is the single-most important feature of a bull market,&rdquo; Enrique asserts.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Perhaps not surprisingly, the market is taking a rest as the new week and month begin.
At last check the S&amp;P is down a half percent on the day at 6,815. Given the furious run-up of the previous five trading sessions &mdash; a 4.8% rally &mdash; some backing and filling is to be expected at a time like this.
The Dow and the Nasdaq are likewise in the red, but not dramatically.
➢ One economic number of note: The ISM Manufacturing Index for November rings in at 48.2 &mdash; lower than October and lower than the guess of the typical Wall Street economist. As a reminder, numbers under 50 suggest the U.S. factory sector is shrinking &mdash; and except for two months in early 2025, the index has been under 50 consistently for the last three years.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Precious Metals Want to Party, Too
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />It&rsquo;s not just stocks that registered new monthly highs at the end of November: So did precious metals.
Gold ended the month at $4,217 &mdash; about 3.3% below its record daily close of $4,355.
&ldquo;Thanks to this recent thrust, it&rsquo;ll be a cinch to recapture the old highs before the end of the year,&rdquo; writes the Rude Awakening&rsquo;s Sean Ring in his <a href="https://rudeawakening.info/posts/silver-surfing-and-bonus-tickers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">monthly wrap-up</a> of the chart action in every major asset class. &ldquo;Once that&rsquo;s captured, we can look forward to $4,916.&rdquo;
Already the bid on the Midas metal is up to $4,235 this morning.
Meanwhile, silver ended November at an all-time daily high of $56.37. The $50 records of both 1980 and 2011 are fading into memory. It&rsquo;s up another 2.7% this morning to $57.84.
&ldquo;Some commentators are calling for a run to $72,&rdquo; says Sean &mdash; &ldquo;while my target is $70.50. Let&rsquo;s see what Mr. Slammy tries this week, if he&rsquo;s got any tricks left in his bag.&rdquo;
As for the mining stocks, the HUI index is up modestly this morning to 681 &mdash; within spitting distance of the October high at 687.
➢ Elsewhere in the commodity space, oil is up nearly 1.4% to start the week at $59.34. But the chart action is not encouraging.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Alas, digital assets are starting the month on a very wrong foot.
No sooner did the calendar turn to December in Greenwich Mean Time &mdash; five hours ahead of New York &mdash; than Bitcoin took a dramatic drop from $91,000 to nearly $84,000. That&rsquo;s the lowest since mid-April.
Ethereum took a similar spill from over 3,000 to under $2,750 &mdash; the lowest since July.
&ldquo;Bitcoin and Ethereum remain locked in their respective downtrends as the calendar flips to December,&rdquo; Greg Guenthner writes at The Trading Desk. &ldquo;That doesn&rsquo;t bode well for speculators, who are still AWOL as melt-up season is supposed to kick into high gear.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Follow-Ups
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Rolling blackouts are a sure thing if data center expansion continues unchecked in the mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes states.
So concludes Monitoring Analytics &mdash; an independent watchdog that keeps an eye on PJM, the nation&rsquo;s biggest regional grid operator. PJM serves 65 million customers in 13 states stretching from New Jersey west to Illinois. Its service area includes Virginia&rsquo;s &ldquo;Data Center Alley,&rdquo; home to the country&rsquo;s biggest concentration of data centers.
A new report from Monitoring Analytics warns that PJM is looking to add data centers to the grid at such a furious clip that planned blackouts would be the only way to meet overall demand.
The report urges the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to lower the boom on PJM &mdash; ordering it to make the operators of data centers wait in line until the grid can accommodate them.
&ldquo;If PJM has an obligation to provide reliable service to all PJM loads, is it just and reasonable for PJM to add new loads that it cannot serve reliably?&rdquo; Monitoring Analytics asks in the report. &ldquo;The answer to that question is no.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;ve been warning regularly for nearly two years that AI is imposing demands on the power grid that the grid isn&rsquo;t equipped to handle. Something&rsquo;s got to give.
In the meantime, &ldquo;independent power producers&rdquo; that are not regulated utilities are turning into enormously profitable investments &mdash; as many Paradigm readers have discovered this year with plays like Constellation Energy (CEG).
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />With copper prices on the rise again, copper thefts are also on the rise again.
It&rsquo;s a reliable cycle we&rsquo;ve chronicled for 15 years: Rising copper prices are an incentive for thieves looking to sell copper for scrap; manhole covers are a favorite target.
Today&rsquo;s Wall Street Journal tells us that in Los Angeles, &ldquo;Thieves have wreaked havoc in the area, prying open manholes, chipping away at asphalt and climbing trees and poles to cut and steal &mdash; and then resell &mdash; copper wires that transmit electrical signals for phone and internet lines.&rdquo;
AT&amp;T says the thefts have disrupted both internet and landline phone service &mdash; including 911 calls.
&ldquo;From January to June of this year,&rdquo; says the Journal, &ldquo;9,770 incidents of intentional theft or sabotage on communications networks were reported, according to the Internet &amp; Television Association, a trade group known as NCTA. That is nearly double the number reported in the prior six-month period. The attacks disrupted service for more than 8 million customers.&rdquo;
Don&rsquo;t expect this to change: The aforementioned Sean Ring tells us &ldquo;copper&rsquo;s rally is real, and it&rsquo;s spectacular.&rdquo; The red metal ended November at $5.19 a pound. It&rsquo;s been coiling throughout October and November, ready to blast toward its record levels earlier this year around $5.90.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Giant Silver Bar
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />To celebrate the anniversary of its independence, the United Arab Emirates has rolled out the world&rsquo;s biggest-ever silver bar.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6yqWw2qIZrQGlunbgJ46ig/95e05242082110e9491f845b305a51b7/fmf_silver_bar.png" alt="Silver Bar Tweet" />
It&rsquo;s over four feet long and weighs 1,971 kilograms. The latter number was not chosen at random but rather to mark the UAE&rsquo;s formal independence from the United Kingdom 54 years ago tomorrow &mdash; Dec. 2, 1971.
A project of the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, the bar has set a Guinness World Record.
We&rsquo;ll do the math: 1,971 kg translates to 63,369 troy ounces &mdash; which at today&rsquo;s prices is worth over $3.6 million.
&ldquo;As part of a landmark project involving DMCC and leading industry players,&rdquo; reports Mining.com, &ldquo;the bar is now set to be tokenized through DMCC&rsquo;s Tradeflow platform, marking the first time a Guinness-recognized metal bar will undergo tokenization under a regulated framework.&rdquo;
The tokenization part of the announcement is getting the side-eye from some corners of social media&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5OUlqmxMo6FQHfKXRtaAcK/efdbbd771503f0338796be163dd35ffd/fmf_silver_bar_2.png" alt="Silver Bar Tweet" />
Earlier this year the UAE rolled out the world&rsquo;s biggest gold bar, weighing just over 300 kilograms or 9,645 ounces &mdash; valued as of this morning at nearly $41 million.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Quality of Labor, Gold Perceptions
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Speaking of good help being hard to find,&rdquo; a reader writes as we tie up a few loose ends in the mailbag&hellip;
&ldquo;According to Google, &lsquo;Approximately 77% of young Americans aged 17&ndash;24 cannot meet military enlistment standards, with the majority disqualified for reasons such as obesity, drug use, physical and mental health issues or a criminal record. Recent data indicates that only 23% of this age group is fully qualified to serve, a number that has declined in recent years.
&ldquo;Even the military struggles to find good help.
&ldquo;During the Vietnam War, when we had the draft, I don't know of anyone who didn't meet enlistment standards due to weight or intelligence. Go figure&hellip;&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />After our Jim Rickards <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/in-ai-we-trust/#3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">needled</a> Goldman Sachs veteran Jim O&rsquo;Neill for a failure to grasp gold&rsquo;s significance, a reader writes&hellip;
&ldquo;Lots of confusion everywhere; becoming increasingly difficult to have much confidence in anybody's view/opinion &mdash; even the so-called &lsquo;experts&rsquo; often self-anointed or self-appointed.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Methinks Mr. O'Neill should also have some additional thoughts about Bitcoin or other crypto as money (perhaps he does, yo no se) but I realize that that is now the establishment's truth &mdash; its gospel.
&ldquo;Your insight and intellectual honesty is appreciated &mdash; a rare trait these days.&rdquo;
Dave responds: We do what we can to keep it real. Thanks for the kind words!

fmf hero 120125

Not Just the Mag 7

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Fear vs. Reality
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Rarely has the stock market staged a rebound as strong as the one since last Friday&hellip; and at the same time, investor sentiment has remained this gloomy.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/181B46fG5keHb5y4y6NjjI/d6aa03ccdae0b49eafd6bb4b6758d915/cnn_fear_greed.png" alt="fear and greed index" />
In recent years, CNN has published a &ldquo;Fear &amp; Greed Index&rdquo; comprising seven market indicators &ndash; everything from momentum to breadth to options activity. Ranked on a scale of 1-100, anything under 25 is considered &ldquo;Extreme Fear.&rdquo; And that&rsquo;s where the index has sat for nearly two weeks now.
&ldquo;Sheer, unadulterated terror is gripping the average investor so tightly that they've parked a staggering $7.39 trillion in money market funds,&rdquo; observes Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />And yet&hellip; as Thanksgiving weekend approaches, the S&amp;P 500 is up another 0.9% today at 6,826 &ndash; only 0.9% off its all-time closing high less than a month ago.
For whatever reason, sentiment is in the toilet amid a 5% pullback earlier this month &ndash; a totally normal occurrence, we&rsquo;ll remind you.
Whether the buzz is about an AI bubble or Federal Reserve policy, the reasons don&rsquo;t matter. Not if you&rsquo;re serious about making money.
&ldquo;This is the moment when fear and reality have completely diverged, creating an opportunity for those willing to see what's actually happening beneath the noise,&rdquo; Enrique says.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Beneath the noise, &ldquo;Corporate America delivered a powerhouse Q3 2025 earnings season,&rdquo; says Enrique.
&ldquo;The S&amp;P 500 achieved a blended year-over-year earnings growth rate of 13.1% &mdash; and an astonishing 82% of companies beat their earnings-per-share estimates.&rdquo;
Across decades of market history, that&rsquo;s a top-10% performance.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;This recent selloff reminds me of two previous pullbacks we have seen in the last 18 months,&rdquo; Enrique continues.
&ldquo;Most folks will think of the massive &lsquo;Trump Tariff Tantrum&rsquo; in April. But I think the better analogies are the selloffs in August 2024 and January 2025.&rdquo;
Here&rsquo;s a Bloomberg chart of the S&amp;P 500 going back to mid-2024. Note the two red lines Enrique has added here.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5c0whZUniuURqymP4c2QBg/da6e3901f6045803b73ff258ac50f25c/sp500_chart.png" alt="S&amp;P 500" />
In the summer of 2024, there was a freakout over the future of the &ldquo;yen carry trade&rdquo; &ndash; in which deep-pocketed investors around the world borrowed Japanese yen at next to no cost and invested in a host of assets all over the world that could generate a respectable return.
&ldquo;This steep move lower was centered around the very best stocks in the stock market,&rdquo; Enrique recalls &ndash; and as you can see, it had no staying power.
Then in early 2025 came the freakout over the Chinese AI engine DeepSeek. (Remember that?) In a single day, Enrique urged his premium subscribers to lay on three positions that all rose by double-digits in three weeks as the market staged a comeback (however brief it turned out to be).
Given the backdrop of strong corporate earnings &ndash; and a president who&rsquo;s keen to boost his party&rsquo;s chances in the midterm elections &ndash; &ldquo;I think that right now we are on the verge of ANOTHER one of these moments,&rdquo; says Enrique.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Before we move on to other matters, a quick pulse of assets apart from stocks&hellip;
Gold is looking strong, up $38 to $4,157. Silver is looking stronger, up $1.49 and only a dime away from $53. (And the mining stocks are stout too, the HUI index up 3.7% to 656.)
Elsewhere in the commodity complex, crude languishes at $58.15. Going into the holiday weekend, the national average gasoline price is a nickel less than it was a week ago.
Crypto is showing signs of life again with Bitcoin less than $800 away from the $90,000 mark and Ethereum back over $3,000.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />As AI Goes, So Goes the Economy
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />You heard it here first: AI is the only thing propping up the U.S. economy.
<a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/without-ai-the-economy-is-toast" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Last month</a>, we showed you how two economists &ndash; working independently &ndash; reached that conclusion. And <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/in-ai-we-trust" target="_blank" rel="noopener">last week</a>, we showed you how the AI economy was decoupling from the &ldquo;real economy&rdquo; of retailing, freight hauling, etc.
Now the proposition has gone mainstream: &ldquo;Economy Is Now Addicted to AI Spending,&rdquo; screamed the front page of yesterday&rsquo;s Wall Street Journal.
&ldquo;The turbulence that hit stocks tied to artificial intelligence last week highlights a broader risk to the economy,&rdquo; the article began. &ldquo;Growth has become so dependent on AI-related investment and wealth that if the boom turns to bust, it could take the broader economy with it.
&ldquo;Business investment in AI might have accounted for as much as half of the growth in gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, in the first six months of the year. Rising AI stocks are also boosting household wealth, leading to more consumer spending, especially in recent months.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Now that The Wall Street Journal is noticing, so is the White House.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/348aaYJIN5ZV0fSfapuJEN/7df5e5a887f7c86de4a3f456b11b70c4/sacks_tweet.png" alt="david sacks tweet" />
That&rsquo;s David Sacks, the venture capital guy who&rsquo;s now Donald Trump&rsquo;s AI and crypto czar.
The social media reaction has been&hellip; interesting. &ldquo;AI czar setting up likely government support narrative,&rdquo; tweets Edward Dowd, a former BlackRock manager who&rsquo;s acquired a following as a financial renegade.
&ldquo;Basically the economy is so hollowed out that the only game in town is the race to build the digital gulag. Good times.&rdquo;
Sacks was compelled to reply &ndash; reminding us of <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/no-bailout-for-you-openai" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the &ldquo;no bailouts&rdquo; promise he made</a> earlier this month after OpenAI was proposing taxpayer-backed loan guarantees to finance its expansion.
&ldquo;Puzzled that anyone could interpret [my] post as supporting a bailout. I&rsquo;ve already opposed that. Nor do I believe one is needed.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;ll take Sacks at his word today. Then again, we remember government officials and bankers in 2007 and 2008 saying the banks would never need any taxpayer help&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Lights Out
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />If the power grid runs into trouble this winter, it won&rsquo;t necessarily be in the usual places.
The North American Electricity Reliability Corporation is out with its annual &ldquo;Winter Reliability Assessment.&rdquo;
The good news is that despite the lack of investment in the power grid&hellip; and the skyrocketing demands that AI is placing on the grid&hellip; every region of North America is in good shape assuming there&rsquo;s no heavy-duty winter weather.
But in the event of &ldquo;more extreme winter conditions extending over a wide area,&rdquo; NERC&rsquo;s report warns of &ldquo;electricity supply shortfalls.&rdquo;
Last winter, the risks were spread across a large swath of the country extending from the Dakotas down to Texas, and from the Great Lakes to the mid-Atlantic. As a polar vortex approached the eastern U.S. at the start of 2025, <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/ai-shows-its-work#polar" target="_blank" rel="noopener">we chronicled</a> how NERC warned of widespread outages if regional grid operators didn&rsquo;t take preventive steps. (Fortunately, they did.)
Most of last year&rsquo;s potential trouble spots are in the clear this year &ndash; except for Texas, where we spotlighted the risks <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-nvda-trap" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in Monday&rsquo;s edition</a> of 5 Bullets. Elsewhere, the risk is elevated in New England, the Carolinas and the Pacific Northwest.
Here is NERC&rsquo;s map spotlighting the regional grid operators potentially at risk during an extreme cold snap&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7iiz1Ga5gDCuOZoa0aOt3f/e922b238e1df25a860cecbec71ce2da6/weather_risk.png" alt="weather risk map" />
New England is at additional risk from depleted stockpiles of natural gas. That is, even if the grid itself can keep up with demand, there might not be enough gas on hand to feed the grid.
We&rsquo;ve been warning regularly since mid-2022 that the steady closings of coal-fired and nuclear power plants were putting the grid at risk. And we amplified those warnings starting in early 2024 as AI data centers put additional demands on the grid.
This year, Paradigm readers started reaping the profits from this phenomenon as share prices of &ldquo;independent power producers&rdquo; that aren&rsquo;t regulated utilities began to soar. On May 7, we offered a rare free pick in 5 Bullets &ndash; Constellation Energy &ndash; which is up 34% since. Meanwhile, Enrique Abeyta pinpointed a special trade for his paid readers, garnering 177% on Talen Energy.
As you can see, the risks haven&rsquo;t gone away &ndash; and neither have the profit opportunities. Stay tuned in 2026.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />DOGE, We Hardly Knew Ye
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The federal agency DOGE is officially no more. You could make a strong case that it was never real to begin with.
As you might recall, back when Elon Musk was Donald Trump&rsquo;s chief campaign surrogate last year, Musk volunteered himself to run a &ldquo;Department of Government Efficiency.&rdquo;
A couple of weeks before Election Day, he told a Trump rally, &ldquo;I think we can reduce the annual federal budget by at least $2 trillion per year.&rdquo;
Literally a year ago today, <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/buy-sell-hold/#4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">your editor was already warning</a> there might be less to DOGE than met the eye.
Then, even before Trump returned to office. Musk dialed back his ambitions from $2 trillion to $1 trillion. By April, the number was down to a mere $150 billion. Amid his falling-out with Trump, Musk relinquished his White House duties at the end of May.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Asked about DOGE&rsquo;s status earlier this month, White House Office of Personnel Management director Scott Kupor said, &ldquo;That doesn&rsquo;t exist.&rdquo; It is no longer a &ldquo;centralized entity,&rdquo; he told the Reuters newswire.
Kinda premature, no? As a reminder, DOGE&rsquo;s mandate to slash away at the size of government extended through July 4 of next year &ndash; a symbolic deadline coinciding with the nation&rsquo;s 250th birthday.
Whatever meager savings DOGE achieved have been more than offset by brand-new boondoggles. <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/without-ai-the-economy-is-toast/#3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">As documented</a> in this e-letter last month, Uncle Sam&rsquo;s spending grew 3.9% from fiscal year 2024 to fiscal year 2025. Spending fell microscopically during the first eight full months of the Trump administration &ndash; but only because of some accounting gimmicks with the student loan program.
Meanwhile in October &ndash; the first month of fiscal year 2026 &ndash; federal spending totaled $689 billion, up a staggering 18% from October 2024.
That&rsquo;s despite a &ldquo;partial government shutdown&rdquo; last month&hellip; and a Biden administration that was spending like mad a year earlier to boost Kamala Harris&rsquo; election chances.
No wonder gold is holding up so well after its recent downdraft. It&rsquo;s the ultimate refuge from the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasuries&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: The Tradition Continues
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />About the American Farm Bureau Federation&rsquo;s cost estimate of Thanksgiving dinner &ndash; spotlighted <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-nvda-trap" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in Monday&rsquo;s edition</a> &ndash; a reader writes&hellip;
&ldquo;I can say for one that my cost for feeding 10 people in the beautiful state of California is a lot higher than the estimated amount of $55.18.&nbsp;
&ldquo;My Thanksgiving costs including a Butterball turkey and all of the trimming was $186.12 for the estimated 10 that will be at our home this week. I can tell you this amount does not include any alcohol or drinks for the family either as I purchased those items at Costco as they are much cheaper there than at Vons grocery store where I purchased our items.&nbsp;
&ldquo;I honestly do not know where these folks got their amount from. Did they include the actual prices from the &lsquo;Golden State?&rsquo;
&ldquo;I had to comment on this because this is the second time I saw the comment about how much people are paying for the items to make a Thanksgiving dinner and they were so far off I felt my comments were necessary. I will have to manage our grocery bills for the next month much closer because of the higher costs. Things are still just too expensive.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Thanks for reading my ramble!&rdquo;
Dave responds: You&rsquo;re now part of a time-honored tradition in these digital pages &ndash; ragging on the Farm Bureau for its perpetually lowball estimate, no doubt skewed by factory-farmed turkey, store-bought pie crust, etc.
Or as a reader said way back in 2016, &ldquo;a Monsanto-laced GMO special Thanksgiving dinner that glows under a blacklight.&rdquo;
Ah well. However much your feast ends up costing, we hope you spend it among people whose company you treasure&hellip; that you have much to be thankful for&hellip; and that the investment guidance we furnish at Paradigm Press contributed some small part to your blessings in 2025.

fmf hero 112625

Fear vs. Reality

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Strong Earnings, Stealth Selloff
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;The stock market has been in a stealth selloff for the past few months,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s pro trader Enrique Abeyta.
&ldquo;Even while the major indexes were hitting new highs just a few weeks ago, the majority of stocks were actually moving lower.
&ldquo;Now this correction has begun to impact the larger indexes, despite strong earnings results from companies recently.
&ldquo;The latest example is Nvidia,&rdquo; he reminds.
&ldquo;Even though the company reported exemplary numbers on its earnings call last week, the stock ended the following day down 3.15%.
&ldquo;Nvidia&rsquo;s latest earnings report &mdash; as they all do &mdash; brought up speculation over the AI bubble.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;My view is that we absolutely are in a bubble. But the key is to understand what exactly a &lsquo;bubble&rsquo; means for stocks and how it plays out over time.&rdquo; 
&ldquo;Each time a revolutionary technology like AI comes along, we get extreme levels of investor enthusiasm with it.
&ldquo;There&rsquo;s intense speculative activity with investors misallocating large amounts of their capital.
&ldquo;A lot of capital goes into companies that will never achieve any success,&rdquo; says Enrique. &ldquo;For a period of time, these are the best stocks in the entire market.
&ldquo;Unfortunately, most of these stocks will lead to steep losses. And in many cases, the shares will be worthless.
&ldquo;Is that what&rsquo;s happening right now? I don&rsquo;t think so&hellip; At least, not yet.
&ldquo;Especially not when you see the strong earnings like we saw this last quarter. Not just for Nvidia, but for a broad swath of companies.
&ldquo;Here are some charts from Bespoke Investment Group showing how this most recent quarter ranks relative to other quarters historically.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3S43C2WYBtJ2IXOJDus98H/75956e74398cfaf0396dfe70e3780483/fmf_enrique_chart.png" alt="Bespoke Investment Group charts" />
Q3 2025 was one of the strongest earnings seasons in recent years: By early November, nearly 90% of S&amp;P 500 companies beat profit estimates, more than 75% topped revenue forecasts and overall earnings grew about 13% year-over-year.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve invested professionally through bubbles before. I saw the 2008 crash coming. I wasn&rsquo;t surprised when the dot-com bubble burst,&rdquo; says Enrique.
&ldquo;And I can tell you this is not how the bubble bursts.&rdquo;
Even when it inevitably does, Enrique has a winning strategy:
&ldquo;First, we focus on buying real businesses that will succeed even if AI spending falls. They may not reach the same height of growth, but they will grow nevertheless.
&ldquo;Second, we are disciplined with our profit- and loss-taking. This allows us to make sure we keep our gains if the market heads for a lengthy pullback.
&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s my strongly held view that the current bull market has plenty of time left. It&rsquo;s not time to panic (yet).
&ldquo;That brings me to one last point,&rdquo; he adds. &ldquo;We have a rare opportunity to make a ton of money while the majority of investors sit on the sidelines.&rdquo;
[A chain reaction has begun on Wall Street, one that could send a whole series of stocks absolutely exploding over the next year.
&ldquo;And this Tuesday, Nov. 25 at 11 a.m. (ET), I&rsquo;m going to prove it to you,&rdquo; Enrique says.
<a href="https://signups.paradigm-press.info/2497036" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Click here to register for The Paradigm Alpha Summit on Tuesday.</a>
Your attendance at Tuesday&rsquo;s event is completely FREE. All you need to do is register with the link above to reserve your spot.
&ldquo;At the event, I&rsquo;ll reveal the name and ticker symbol of my #1 stock that I believe is set to explode by Dec. 2,&rdquo; Enrique adds, &ldquo;100% free, no credit card required.&rdquo;
Reserve your spot today!]
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The Great Crypto Disconnect
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Crypto is sending mixed signals &mdash; record adoption, but painful price action. 
&ldquo;After 10 years in this space, I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ve seen a disconnect this sharp,&rdquo; admits Paradigm&rsquo;s crypto expert Chris Campbell. &ldquo;Crypto got everything it wanted (and more)&hellip; and yet, it&rsquo;s never looked so dismal.&rdquo;
So what&rsquo;s really happening? Chris says the downturn &ldquo;isn&rsquo;t your average bear.&rdquo; Liquidity is tight, and &ldquo;when liquidity is low, crypto gets punched first.&rdquo; But there&rsquo;s more going on: &ldquo;By the looks of it, big players are being forced to sell, and they&rsquo;re doing it in the worst, most awkward way possible.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s like a couple of Goliaths are walking through a crowd of hobbits, shoving everyone around,&rdquo; he says. They&rsquo;re &ldquo;selling at the same time every day,&rdquo; seemingly without regard for price or news. The data, Chris says, &ldquo;fits the story of a forced liquidation.&rdquo;
Also, Japan may be an outsized part of the problem. &ldquo;Japan is being hit with a financial storm: interest rates jumped, the stock market fell fast and the yen lost value.&rdquo; Because Japan is a major global lender, &ldquo;trouble there quickly spreads everywhere else,&rdquo; pulling money out of riskier assets like crypto and tech.
Meanwhile, &ldquo;most asset managers have underperformed the market this year,&rdquo; forcing them to &ldquo;chase performance&rdquo; in tech and AI stocks &mdash; leaving crypto behind temporarily.
Still, blockchain activity tells a completely different story. Stablecoin volume has exploded &mdash; from $7.6T (2023) to over $18T (2024), with 2025 on pace to surpass that. DeFi and tokenized assets are booming. And users: &ldquo;100 million people used crypto in 2020&hellip; we&rsquo;ll hit 860 million this year.
&ldquo;Look, we get it,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;The volatility is uncomfortable. It&rsquo;s annoying. But it&rsquo;s temporary.&rdquo;
His bottom line: &ldquo;Right now, James Altucher and I are buyers.&rdquo; Chris&rsquo;s advice is simple: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t overcommit. Don&rsquo;t use leverage. Dollar-cost average. Buy high-quality (Tier 1) assets.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Bitcoin&rsquo;s still sliding today &mdash; down 0.50% to $87,000. Ethereum, on the other hand, is retracing its steps: 0.70% to $2,850. 
As for the major U.S. stock indexes, they&rsquo;re all in the green at the time of writing. The tech-driven Nasdaq, in particular, is up 2.30% to 22,795 while the S&amp;P 500 is up 1.35% to 6,690. The Big Board, meanwhile, is up 0.60% to 46,515.
Notably, Google&rsquo;s parent company Alphabet is approaching a $4 trillion market value, set to become the third U.S. company to reach that milestone.
Shares jumped more than 5% today to a record $315.90, bringing its valuation to $3.82 trillion &mdash; up about 70% this year and outpacing other Mag 7 rivals, including Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia and Apple.
Alphabet regained momentum via its new AI model Gemini 3 &mdash; as well as Berkshire Hathaway&rsquo;s $4.3 billion investment in Q3. The company likewise weathered antitrust scrutiny, avoiding a court-ordered breakup (despite being found to hold an illegal search-engine monopoly).
Still, Alphabet&rsquo;s rapid rise has sparked debate over inflated tech valuations and potential echoes of the dot-com bubble. Analysts, however, see its vast cash flow, custom AI chips and dominant search business as strong advantages in the ongoing AI race.
Finally, checking on commodities, crude is up 0.60% to $58.40 for a barrel of WTI. Precious metals? Gold is up 0.30% to $4,091.50 per ounce, and silver is up 0.50% to $50.15.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Data Centers Freeze the Grid?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The rapid expansion of data centers is more than just a tech boom &mdash; it&rsquo;s raising the stakes for all of us when winter hits. 
The Lone Star State, for one, is drawing massive data-center requests thanks to abundant renewable energy, plentiful natural gas and a business-friendly climate.
OpenAI is developing, for instance, its flagship &ldquo;Stargate&rdquo; campus in Abilene, Texas, with a planned power draw of 1.2 gigawatts &mdash; roughly the output of a large nuclear plant.
Meanwhile, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) flagged the grid-impact risk of data centers operating 24/7:
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;Strong load growth from new data centers and other large industrial end users is driving higher winter electricity demand forecasts and contributing to continued risk of supply shortfalls.&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
That&rsquo;s not a theoretical worry. Remember Winter Storm Uri in February 2021, when freezing temperatures triggered simultaneous surges in heating demand and massive power-plant failures? In Texas, more than 4.5 million people lost power for several days.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Now add relentless data-center demand into the mix &mdash; and you get a grid that might buckle under extreme winter conditions. 
In the region managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) &mdash; which covers about 90% of the state&rsquo;s electric load, including major cities such as Dallas&ndash;Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio and Austin &mdash; large-load interconnection requests have surged past 200 gigawatts. Roughly 70% of those requests are tied to data centers, according to ERCOT filings.
And per NERC&rsquo;s 2025&ndash;26 assessment, &ldquo;Winter electricity demand is rising at the fastest rate in recent years, particularly in areas where data center development is occurring.&rdquo;
What this means for you: Even though the grid is rated reliable under ordinary conditions, the real risk emerges during a week-long deep freeze &mdash; with plants offline, gas supply constrained, batteries depleted and lighting up server racks instead of homes.
You might think &ldquo;data centers don&rsquo;t affect me,&rdquo; but when they pull gigawatts and stretch supply, you face the same blackout risk Texas lived through.
&ldquo;Power shortfalls and rolling outages really could happen [in] certain regions&rdquo; of the U.S., warns Rob Gramlich of Grid Strategies. &ldquo;Those are unacceptable to everybody in the United States.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />The Gold Standard of Transparency
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) has introduced the Gold Reserve Transparency Act of 2025, a push to conduct the first full audit of America&rsquo;s gold reserves in more than half a century.
The House bill (H.R. 3795) was introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) on June 6; Sen. Lee announced the Senate companion last week.
According to Lee, &ldquo;Americans should know whether their literal national treasure is safe and accurately accounted for. That means passing the Gold Reserve Transparency Act, opening Fort Knox, U.S. Mint Facilities and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to an audit, and then making the results public.&rdquo;
The Senate bill lays out a sweeping mandate: Within nine months of enactment, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) must hire a qualified external auditor to perform a full assay, inventory and audit of all U.S.-owned gold reserves &mdash; including deep storage &mdash; assess physical security measures and account for any encumbrances (leases, swaps) or purchases/sales over the past 50 years.
Reports would then be submitted to Congress and the Secretary of the Treasury and published in full, with only security-sensitive details redacted.
&ldquo;The Federal Reserve and Treasury should not be permitted to operate in secrecy, especially when it comes to the most important monetary asset on the planet, i.e. gold,&rdquo; says former Congressman Ron Paul.
&ldquo;Restoring trust as to America&rsquo;s gold-holdings is more important than ever when foreign central banks are scrambling to stockpile gold at incredible rates.&rdquo;
No scheduled vote is on either chamber&rsquo;s calendar yet. We&rsquo;ll keep you posted.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Inflation Takes a Holiday (Allegedly)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />If the American Farm Bureau Federation&rsquo;s (AFBF) Thanksgiving grocery tally for 2025 sounds like a fantasy, you&rsquo;re not alone.
Since 1986, the Farm Bureau has tracked the cost of a &ldquo;classic&rdquo; Thanksgiving meal for 10 &mdash; turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls with butter, peas, cranberries, a veggie tray and pumpkin pie with whipped cream.
This year&rsquo;s total: $55.18.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3JbQxDwMxKHX3Z8aFZ1ElZ/919ce809255821e2a575e6dea2ed91ab/fmf_2025_tday_dinner.jpg" alt="2025 Thanksgiving Dinner" />
Courtesy: American Farm Bureau Federation
That&rsquo;s down 5% from 2024 and the lowest average since 2021, according to the AFBF&rsquo;s annual survey.
The biggest bargain? The bird itself. A 16-pound frozen turkey comes in around $21.50, more than 16% cheaper than last year. That&rsquo;s a welcome shift after two years of elevated prices from avian flu and feed costs. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s encouraging to see some relief in the price of turkeys, as it is typically the most expensive part of the meal,&rdquo; says AFBF economist Faith Parum.
Dinner rolls and stuffing also eased in price. But the humble veggie tray is up 61%, and sweet potatoes have jumped 37% &mdash; thanks to hurricane damage in North Carolina (the country&rsquo;s top sweet-potato producer).
Across U.S. regions, the South remains the cheapest place to feast ($50.01), while the West once again claims the priciest spread ($61.75).
Leftovers? Maybe. Liquor? Not included &mdash; and if history&rsquo;s any guide, it might cost more than the turkey itself.
Still, even as prices wobble from year to year, there&rsquo;s one constant worth remembering: However much the dinner costs, the chance to gather is, as they say&hellip; priceless.

fmf hero 112425

The NVDA Trap

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />The Day After the &ldquo;Whoosh&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Yesterday&rsquo;s action in the stock market was something that normie Americans barely noticed.
A 1.6% drop in the benchmark S&amp;P 500? Not pleasant, but also nothing out of the ordinary.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But finance pros are agog at what happened.
If you were with us yesterday, you&rsquo;ll recall the major averages &ldquo;gapped&rdquo; higher on the heels of Nvidia&rsquo;s stellar earnings numbers &mdash; leaping big-time relative to Wednesday afternoon&rsquo;s close.
But by the time we hit &ldquo;send,&rdquo; the air was already coming out. At day&rsquo;s end, the market was deep in the red.
&ldquo;It was only the THIRD TIME since 1957 that the S&amp;P 500 gapped up more than +1.4% and then closed negative,&rdquo; says Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta.
And the only other times were very recent &mdash; amid COVID in April 2020 and the tariff scare in April of this year.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Which is all interesting, for sure. But how useful is it?
The great thing about working with Enrique is that he digs into data sources that mine actionable information from otherwise silly factoids.
So according to Subu Trade, here&rsquo;s what happened those other two times the S&amp;P gapped up over 1.4% and ended the day in the red: Both times the market was in the green the next day&hellip; the next week&hellip; and the next month.
You can make it out easily on this long-term chart of the S&amp;P&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5URNa3A6zVFIrsIBRqmhqf/83b04ad41bf7b9d83b454ff90ec52e6a/5Bullets_Chart_112125.png" alt="Only Three Times Since 1957" />
In 2020, the S&amp;P was up 8.3% a month after the &ldquo;gap and crap&rdquo; day&hellip; and earlier this year the one-month gain was an even more impressive 13.7%.
Here are some more numbers to geek out on: &ldquo;It was only the FOURTH TIME we have seen the S&amp;P 500 gap up more than 1.4% and then close down more than 1.5%,&rdquo; Enrique tells us.
What happened after that? According to figures from TheMarketStats, in each instance the market was up a week later. And on two of those three occasions &mdash; October 2008 and April 2025 &mdash; it was up one month later.
&ldquo;Ask yourself,&rdquo; Enrique urges: &ldquo;Is the current environment more like six months ago or more like when Lehman went bankrupt and housing was collapsing?
&ldquo;THAT answer will tell you what to do next. We think it is obvious &mdash; 2025! That means BUY THE DIP!&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Sure enough, Mr. Market is staging a rebound going into the weekend.
At last check, the S&amp;P 500 is up three quarters of a percent to 6,588. For the record, yesterday&rsquo;s action finally delivered a 5% pullback from all-time highs for the first time since April. Reminder: A 5% pullback is normal!
Relative to the S&amp;P the Nasdaq&rsquo;s gain today is weaker, the Dow&rsquo;s stronger.
Gold is holding its own at $4,078 but the action in silver has been wild &mdash; plunging to $48.60 at one point, but now back within a few pennies of $50. Crude has sunk 2% &mdash; a barrel of West Texas Intermediate back under $58 for the first time in a month.
Ugly doesn&rsquo;t even begin to describe the action in crypto &mdash; Bitcoin approaching $83,000 for the first time since April and Ethereum just over $2,700.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Follow-Ups
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The Trump administration&rsquo;s latest foray into the energy-and-critical-minerals space is a $1 billion federal loan to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.
Of course, Three Mile Island was the site of an infamous accident in 1979. But only one of the reactors was damaged. The other remained in operation until 2019, when it was mothballed.
Last year, Constellation Energy (CEG) struck a deal with Microsoft: The undamaged reactor would be restarted, providing electricity exclusively to Microsoft data centers for 20 years beginning in 2027.
The Energy Department says Constellation could follow through on its contract without a federal loan &mdash; but the taxpayer backstop would help lower electricity prices for customers on the PJM Interconnection. That&rsquo;s the country&rsquo;s biggest grid operator, serving 65 million people in 13 states.
&ldquo;What&rsquo;s important for the administration is to show support for affordable, reliable, secure energy in the U.S.,&rdquo; says Energy Department senior adviser Greg Beard. &ldquo;This loan to Constellation will lower the cost of capital and make power cheaper for those PJM ratepayers.&rdquo;
Gee &mdash; are homeowners going to see an itemized discount on their electric bill? Just asking!
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The drama over the Chinese-owned chip maker Nexperia is over &mdash; and it&rsquo;s not an overstatement to say it&rsquo;s ended in humiliation for the West.
<a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/ground-zero-of-techs-cold-war" target="_blank" rel="noopener">As we chronicled last month</a>, the Dutch government nationalized Nexperia&rsquo;s operations there &mdash; under considerable pressure from Washington.
<a id="3"></a>
But because 80% of Nexperia&rsquo;s Dutch product is sent to China for packaging and testing, Beijing had ample leverage &mdash; which it exercised by barring exports of the firm&rsquo;s product from China. Volkswagen and Volvo, among others, were at risk of shutting down their assembly lines for lack of chips.
On Wednesday the Dutch government said it would suspend its decision after &ldquo;constructive talks&rdquo; with Beijing. For all intents and purposes, the government un-seized Nexperia and returned control to its Chinese owner.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />D.C. Won&rsquo;t Take Yes for an Answer (Venezuela)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;U.S. Military Aircraft Confirmed to Have Flown Near Venezuela,&rdquo; says a BBC headline.
Relying on flight-tracking data, the Beeb reports that four U.S. military aircraft buzzed the Venezuelan coast last night. &ldquo;These include a long-range bomber, a surveillance aircraft, a fighter jet and a refueling tanker.&rdquo; The aircraft belong to a huge naval and aircraft fleet massed off Venezuela, led by the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford.
&ldquo;I do not believe the U.S. can sustain this magnitude of force projection at a high state of readiness for more than a few days,&rdquo; tweets the military analyst William Schryver. &ldquo;They either have to start the party or turn out the lights and go home.&rdquo;
As we chronicled <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/venezuela-its-not-about-drugs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in Tuesday&rsquo;s edition</a>, the drug trade is merely a pretext for war. If war comes &mdash; and that is still far from certain &mdash; it will be at the behest of powerful special interests that stand to profit from a successful regime change.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The peculiar thing is that Venezuela&rsquo;s President Nicolas Maduro has already offered Washington access to his country&rsquo;s vast natural resources, in hopes of avoiding war.
Last month, The New York Times reported that Venezuelan officials &ldquo;offered the Trump administration a dominant stake in Venezuela&rsquo;s oil and other mineral wealth in discussions that lasted for months, according to multiple people close to the talks&hellip;
&ldquo;Under a deal discussed between a senior U.S. official and Mr. Maduro&rsquo;s top aides, the Venezuelan strongman offered to open up all existing and future oil and gold projects to American companies, give preferential contracts to American businesses, reverse the flow of Venezuelan oil exports from China to the United States and slash his country&rsquo;s energy and mining contracts with Chinese, Iranian and Russian firms.&rdquo;
Maduro&rsquo;s government has also continued accepting U.S. deportation flights &mdash; by one count, more than 10,000 Venezuelans since February.
And yet it seems the Trump administration refuses to take yes for an answer. It cut off all talks in early October.
Shades of the run-up to the Iraq War in 2002&ndash;03: After the war was underway we <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/international/worldspecial/baghdad-scrambled-to-offer-deal-to-us-as-war.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">learned</a> Saddam Hussein was willing to give the Bush administration essentially everything it wanted &mdash; everything except giving up power.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />If war does not come, it will be because the Trump administration feels it lacks the consent of the governed in this country.
On that score, Reuters/Ipsos finds only 21% of Americans support using the U.S. military to oust Maduro. An earlier survey by YouGov came up with a similar number &mdash; 18%.
On a related question leaving Maduro out of the equation &mdash; &ldquo;Would you support or oppose the U.S. using military force to invade Venezuela?&rdquo; &mdash; a majority of respondents to the YouGov survey said they&rsquo;re opposed (55%), including a plurality of Republicans (38%).
Incredibly, support among Republicans for sending Navy ships to the waters around Venezuela declined between September and October.
The America First faction of Trump&rsquo;s base &mdash; already angry about his support for Israel and his flip-flops on Ukraine &mdash; wants nothing to do with it. And they&rsquo;re posting memes like this, harking back to early 2003&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/20UjzRgjg3DvV3kOo5D45s/1c865c0acea41bc7a34bdd26f2045b4a/maga_meme.jpg" alt="Meme" />
And so the U.S. armada sits off Venezuela, planes buzzing the coast.
&ldquo;I believe they may be attempting to goad the Venezuelans into firing on them in order to establish a &lsquo;they struck first&rsquo; pretext to then unleash a massive attack,&rdquo; says the aforementioned William Schryver.
&ldquo;I doubt the Venezuelans will oblige them, and sooner or later the U.S. will have to do &lsquo;something,&rsquo; or call the whole thing off.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Gee, what was it we were saying in <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/in-ai-we-trust">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a> about how the mainstream still doesn&rsquo;t &ldquo;get&rdquo; gold?
But the meme-o-sphere does get it&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/knn1O0fsbr1uiynIZfvPF/ba6184b3576f4ef053b9be04f6354d4c/apes_meme.png" alt="Meme" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Venezuela
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Well said on Venezuela,&rdquo; a longtime reader writes after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/venezuela-its-not-about-drugs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tuesday&rsquo;s edition</a> &mdash; which appears to be the most &ldquo;liked&rdquo; issue we&rsquo;ve published in quite some time.
&ldquo;Hard to tame that imperial impulse,&rdquo; he adds. &ldquo;How did &lsquo;our oil&rsquo; get under their landmass anyway?&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But I&rsquo;d rather give space to some other perspectives &mdash; including one from a longtime reader who lives in nearby Ecuador.
His note is too long to publish in full but he reminds us about the socialist mismanagement of Maduro and his predecessor Chavez.
Ecuador was flooded with refugees amid a wave of runaway inflation starting around 2016&ndash;17. &ldquo;I recall refugees offering notes of 10,000 or 20,000 bolivares at traffic lights for any small change you cared to offer them. I have several I collected that way as souvenirs.&rdquo; Our reader also knew a successful businessman who fled Venezuela as the regime blamed &ldquo;greedy business owners&rdquo; for its travails.
&ldquo;It is absolutely true that Latin American governments do NOT like it when the U.S. tries to engineer regime changes anywhere south of the U.S. border, but while the protests would probably be loud should the U.S. try to overthrow Maduro et al., if the result were to be a Venezuela that was stable and safe, most Venezuelan refugees that I know would really prefer to return home, and the countries where they are now residing would be relieved to see them go.
&ldquo;I do not share all this to advocate any particular position, but so that your readers may have a little better understanding of the situation. The refugees I have known personally are generally good people, struggling to survive when their lives were thrown into turmoil that most of us cannot comprehend.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Now a more forceful reply: &ldquo;Wow, while I do agree with you most of the time, your commentary about Venezuela looks like something I would see on WaPo or CNBC. 
&ldquo;In time, we might be able to compare Venezuela with Iraq, but certainly not at this point. And how can you be so sure this is not about drugs? Are you getting intelligence briefings (pretty sure you're not)?
&ldquo;But you are willing to take the word of a DEI liberal activist like Ms. Kwiatkowski (who also doesn't know anything). Could there be something else of vital importance happening there? The truth is you don't know, and so you should not act like you do know.
&ldquo;Perhaps you are like many of the Demoncrats, apparently screaming about having their supply of cheap cocaine cut off? One has to wonder about the motives of someone so opposed to cutting off the supply of drugs to the U.S.&rdquo;
Dave: My default position is to never trust the claims of government officials without evidence.
And no, it is not too soon to seek analogies to Iraq.
Retired Rep. John Duncan (R-Tennessee) was one of only six Republicans who voted against authorizing the Iraq War. &ldquo;At the time,&rdquo; he writes in the Miami Herald, &ldquo;it was the most unpopular vote of my 30-year congressional career. But it has come to be my most celebrated&hellip;
&ldquo;We now have decades of accumulated wisdom that misguided military ventures, be they outright invasions like Iraq or hybrid regime change wars like in Libya, only lead to catastrophe. I was one of the first Republicans in Congress to endorse Donald Trump for president in 2016 because he appeared to have learned these lessons.&rdquo;
But Duncan is deeply concerned now.
&ldquo;Unlike in 2002, the blowback of regime change in Venezuela would be in America&rsquo;s own backyard. Ironically, a destabilized Venezuela would create the perfect conditions for the very organized criminal and narco-trafficking activities that the Trump administration seeks to combat. It could also trigger a new wave of Venezuelan migration.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;ll leave it there for the week. More about the potential fallout from a regime-change op next week.

fmf hero 112125

Only 3X in Market History… 

FMF-Issue-11-20-25(featured)

In AI We Trust

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Unfinished Business
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It&rsquo;s not too soon to start thinking ahead to 2026. But to think clearly, you have to first contend with unfinished business from 2025.
This year, &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve watched companies tied to big themes like AI, quantum computing and nuclear soar earlier in the year and then pull back,&rdquo; says Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta.
&ldquo;That mix of big winners and sudden losers gives you the chance to clean things up and set yourself up for next year.&rdquo;
Maybe you booked some large &mdash; and taxable &mdash; gains earlier in the year. And maybe you&rsquo;re also sitting on some paper losses.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;This is the perfect time to realize some of those losses and help offset some of those big gains,&rdquo; Enrique ventures.
Just make sure you don&rsquo;t run afoul of the IRS&rsquo; rule governing &ldquo;wash sales.&rdquo; You have to wait at least 30 days after selling a stock before you buy it back.
Not only that, the IRS also watches out for whether you bought a &ldquo;substantially identical&rdquo; position.
&ldquo;This prevents you from taking profits in a stock and simply replacing it with an option on the same stock,&rdquo; Enrique explains. &ldquo;The rules are quite clear that the loss would not be allowed.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;But what about when different stocks trade similarly?&rdquo; Enrique goes on. &ldquo;Take the quantum computing industry, for example.
&ldquo;There are a number of stocks like IonQ Inc. (IONQ), D-Wave Quantum (QBTS), Rigetti Computing (RGTI) and Quantum Computing (QUBT). Even though they are very different companies, they are all in the same industry. So the stocks trade similarly.
&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing stopping you from taking a loss in a stock in this group that you bought recently and using the proceeds to buy back another stock in that industry.&rdquo;
As always, consult a tax professional before making any moves. We&rsquo;re just laying out the big picture.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Another move you can make: Take advantage of the recent sell-off to buy quality stocks at a relative bargain price.
Case in point: Facebook parent Meta Platforms. META &ldquo;reported awesome results at the end of October,&rdquo; Enrique says &mdash; &ldquo;yet the stock is down almost 20% from when it reported.
&ldquo;This is one of the best stocks of all time, and the company is crushing results. Why not take some of your losses and rotate the capital into a long-term winner that&rsquo;s trading at a great price?
&ldquo;There are other examples out there, but I think this is the best one.&rdquo;
<ul>
<li>Another plus for META: Yesterday a federal judge dismissed the Federal Trade Commission&rsquo;s antitrust complaint against Meta &mdash; which accused the company of building an illegal monopoly in social media via its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. The feds might appeal, but it would be an uphill climb.</li>
</ul>
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> At the same time, &ldquo;Beware selling an otherwise good company into the year-end tax-loss retreat just because there&rsquo;s a year-end tax-loss retreat,&rdquo; counsels our Byron King.
Byron is Paradigm&rsquo;s mining-and-energy authority, and he&rsquo;s thinking about many of the gold-mining shares that rallied spectacularly this year &mdash; only to pull back in recent weeks.
&ldquo;Think ahead to early 2026, when good companies will find new buyers. Those currently &lsquo;down&rsquo; shares &mdash; especially some of the solid mining plays that are off their 2025 highs &mdash; may have strong uplift in them come 2026.
&ldquo;Along these last lines, you might consider deploying some cash in, say, early December to go bargain hunting among good names; or at least be prepared to pick up shares at a discount come early January.&rdquo;
Byron expands on these thoughts &mdash; and submits a lengthy list of buys for your consideration &mdash; over at our sister e-letter The Daily Reckoning. <a href="https://dailyreckoning.com/end-of-the-year-lets-look-at-taxes-metals-and-energy/">Worth a look</a>.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" /> NVDA Watch
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In the same way the U.S. stock market marks time ahead of a Federal Reserve announcement, the market is treading water today ahead of Nvidia earnings.
NVDA reports after the closing bell. In the meantime, the S&amp;P 500 and the Nasdaq are staging oversold bounces &mdash; the S&amp;P up about a quarter percent to 6,635 and the Nasdaq up a half-percent at 22,559.
You don&rsquo;t have to look hard to find buzz that NVDA is overvalued. But Davis Wilson from our sister e-letter The Million Mission isn&rsquo;t buying it.
&ldquo;Nvidia trades at 50X trailing earnings &mdash; one of the lowest multiples this company has had in years. On next year&rsquo;s earnings, NVDA trades at just 27X, putting it right in line with companies like Starbucks, Mastercard, Hershey and TJX.
&ldquo;But here&rsquo;s the kicker: Earnings estimates keep rising.
&ldquo;Just 90 days ago, Wall Street expected Nvidia to earn $5.90. Today that estimate is up to $6.83. And these estimates tick higher every day. This is the exact setup I love: A stock drifting lower while earnings move sharply higher.
&ldquo;That gap always closes&hellip; And it usually closes to the upside.&rdquo;
Meanwhile, the hyperscalers &mdash; the Googles, Microsofts and Amazons of the world that buy NVDA chips &mdash; are accelerating plans to keep giving NVDA their business.
So what&rsquo;s to make of the fact NVDA&rsquo;s share price has fallen from $210 to $181? &ldquo;Stocks sometimes fall simply because sentiment weakens,&rdquo; says Davis &mdash; &ldquo;not because fundamentals deteriorate&hellip; The stock price has moved lower. The business hasn&rsquo;t.
&ldquo;Earnings tonight may add volatility, but the long-term direction is unchanged.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In the commodity complex the big story is crude &mdash; down nearly 2.4% after the Energy Department&rsquo;s weekly inventory numbers.
A barrel of West Texas Intermediate trades for $59.31. To be sure, it&rsquo;s traded lower in recent weeks but the trend is unmistakable &mdash; lower highs and lower lows. Not good for the near-term outlook.
Precious metals staged a strong rally this morning, only to give most of it back by midday. At last check, the bid on gold is $4,072 and silver trades at $50.68.
No joy in crypto: Bitcoin is back below $90,000 and Ethereum under $3,000.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Follow-Up: China&rsquo;s Gold
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Now it&rsquo;s become a new cottage industry on Wall Street &mdash; guessing how much gold bullion China is stacking.
<a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/venezuela-its-not-about-drugs#3">Just yesterday</a> we told you how after 15-plus years, mainstream financial media are finally acknowledging that Beijing&rsquo;s gold accumulation is much greater than the official figures released by the People&rsquo;s Bank of China. Gold is how China can trade and transact with other BRICS countries &mdash; really, all of the Global South &mdash; without resorting to U.S. dollars.
Officially, China&rsquo;s gold stash is just over 2,300 metric tons. Unofficially it&rsquo;s probably over twice that total &mdash; making it the world&rsquo;s second largest behind only the United States.
Now it appears Goldman Sachs is issuing monthly estimates of China&rsquo;s gold accumulation. From Bloomberg&hellip;
China added an estimated 15 tons of gold to its forex reserves in September as central banks accelerated their purchases of bullion after a seasonal summer lull, according to Goldman Sachs Group.
The bank&rsquo;s calculation compares with only 1.24 tons of gold purchases that China officially reported for the month.
For whatever it&rsquo;s worth Goldman says the gold price will continue to rise during 2026 &mdash; just not at 2025&rsquo;s furious pace. The analysts&rsquo; year-end 2026 target is $4,900.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />The Golden Toilet: A Bargain!
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Whoever bought the solid-gold toilet at auction last night got a steal.
<img class="aligncenter" title="FMF-Issue-11-19-25(1)" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/12JPJfGRi0Z4PfB06a8m4w/6f8bf7b401dcc229afa01dab444c2f8b/FMF-Issue-11-19-25_1_.png?w=540&amp;h=511" alt="FMF-Issue-11-19-25(1)" width="540" height="511" />
The Italian artist and sculptor Maurizio Cattelan created the golden toilet in 2016 and called it America &mdash; his not-so-subtle commentary on what he considers excessive wealth in this country.
As we mentioned earlier in November, the luxe loo was scheduled to be auctioned this week by Sotheby&rsquo;s after it had been held by a private collector since 2017. The collector&rsquo;s identity was made public only last week &mdash; the hedge fund manager and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen.
(The toilet is fully functional as long as it&rsquo;s hooked up to plumbing; did Cohen have it installed in one of his bathrooms?)
&ldquo;The work, which weighs just over 100 kilograms and contains roughly 2,440 ounces of gold (worth $9.9 million as of Monday evening), came to auction with a starting bid pegged to the value of its metal alone,&rdquo; according to a story at the ARTnews site.
Bidding started at $10 million even. Turns out there was only one bidder, his or her identity still unknown. The final price, including fees: $12.1 million.
Hmmm&hellip; That&rsquo;s a mere 21% premium over the spot price of gold.
For perspective, you can buy a one-ounce U.S. Gold Eagle today and expect to pay the typical dealer a premium of just over 5%.
Seen in this context, 21% percent seems paltry. Looking forward a year or two, the buyer stands to make more money from the gold than from the &ldquo;artistic value&rdquo; of the work!
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Gold IRAs, Quality of Labor
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you address the pitfalls of purchasing gold?&rdquo; a reader writes.
&ldquo;In April I decided to roll over my IRA into gold coins and decided to use American Hartford Gold. I recently went to find out that the value of the gold I purchased was worth 20% less than the money I invested. Also the coins had not appreciated as gold bullion had over the six months.
&ldquo;I wish now I had not rolled over my IRA which is worth $50,000 less than I started with.&rdquo;
Dave responds: I&rsquo;m sorry that happened to you. In mid-2023 we published <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-truth-about-gold-iras">an extensive warning</a> about gold IRAs and the &mdash; ummm &mdash; questionable business practices of the firms that market them most aggressively. Caveat emptor.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> I figured our email thread about &ldquo;good help is hard to find&rdquo; had pretty much wound down yesterday. Was I ever wrong!
&ldquo;I live in Iowa &mdash; very rural. Iowa is basically one big farm with a few larger and many smaller cities.
&ldquo;Work ethic is our culture, but because of the things your readers stated &mdash; especially the government handouts and socialist policies &mdash; many are working the system. Working part time and living on food stamps and whatever else is given out in housing assistance, etc.
&ldquo;These beloved liberals who hate America are poisoning our country and our culture hoping that their lies will be believed by those living off their lies.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;As a retired health care worker I have seen how the work ethic has eroded,&rdquo; writes another.
&ldquo;Plus, the state and federal departments of education have lowered standards of proficiency so low to make the so-called teachers look good. What was failing 10 years ago is now being proficient.
&ldquo;Now AI is shown to take away middle-management jobs &mdash; what is there to strive for to better yourself? I'm glad I am as old as I am.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The readers sharing their insight into labor issues made me think of a saying:
&ldquo;&lsquo;Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create soft men. Soft men create hard times.&rsquo;
&ldquo;Is that how it goes?
&ldquo;Things have sure changed. In about 1983 I started driving a logging truck for my dad full time. Interest rates were still very high. Jobs were hard to find. It was late in the season and I worked almost 100 hours my first week from Monday through Saturday. Sunday was unpaid fix-the-truck day. I felt I had earned myself a sleep-in. Wrong.
&ldquo;The phone rang about 9 a.m.. It was my dad. He said my name to make sure it was me, and then screamed out an expletive-laden 15 seconds telling me If I didn't get to work immediately I was fired, and then hung up the phone so hard it seemed to ring the bell on my end&hellip; ha ha ha.
&ldquo;(I wasn't laughing at the time, I was getting my boots on.) The good old days.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I am not-so-patiently waiting for someone to tell me WHERE the billions of dollars worth of &lsquo;reshored&rsquo; factories are going to get QUALIFIED employees to work in them,&rdquo; says our final correspondent.
&ldquo;The last two generations of high school graduates, along with many college graduates, cannot write a sentence without spelling and grammar errors. Basic mathematics appears to be somewhat of a mystery to them, and a very high percentage are just fat and lazy. And note that 65% of those who adhere to one particular political party support socialism and thinly disguised Marxism.&rdquo;
Dave: Thanks again to everyone for weighing in. Other mailbag topics &mdash; including Venezuela, and <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/venezuela-its-not-about-drugs">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a> generated some interesting replies &mdash; will have to wait till tomorrow. Our cup runneth over!

FMF-Issue-11-19-25(Featured)

Unfinished Business for 2025

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Venezuela: It&rsquo;s Not About Drugs
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />An American regime-change war in Venezuela, if it comes, will not be about drugs. 
Asked yesterday about sending in U.S. troops, the president said, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t rule out that. I don&rsquo;t rule out anything.&rdquo;
On the other hand, he said the day before that his administration &ldquo;may be having some discussions&rdquo; with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Whatever the case, a sizable American armada is massed off Venezuela&rsquo;s coast, led by the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Trump and his advisers &ldquo;have to do something big to justify this massive deployment of forces, and they have to do it SOON,&rdquo; tweets the military analyst William Schryver.
&ldquo;As in, within hours or a few days at most. They can't just hang out for weeks blowing up little boats with Reaper drones.
&ldquo;And if all they planned on doing was launching a few dozen Tomahawks at various targets in Venezuela, they would not have a carrier strike group and an amphibious ready group in the mix.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The parallels to the Iraq War that began in 2003 are many &mdash; and disturbing.
Take it from retired Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski. She was the Pentagon insider who, weeks after the war began, started blowing the whistle on the officials who peddled the most outrageous lies before the war.
&ldquo;In a world where government lies may be easily refuted in seconds, Trump&rsquo;s initiation of war for Venezuelan oil and resources presented as a war on drugs and made-up narco-terror is as illegal as it is embarrassing,&rdquo; Kwiatkowski tells the Eisenhower Media Network.
Adds the retired but tireless Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas): &ldquo;The Saddam Hussein WMD factories of 2002 have become the Nicolas Maduro cocaine and fentanyl factories of 2025 and once again the neocon war lies are amplified by the U.S. mainstream media and transmitted to the American people.
&ldquo;A new disaster is in the making. The &lsquo;global war on terror&rsquo; has been rebranded the &lsquo;hemispheric war on narco-terror&rsquo; and the U.S. military industrial complex is rubbing its hands in anticipation of a windfall.&rdquo;
But not just the military industrial complex. Time to follow the money&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;The nice thing is, they&rsquo;ve got plenty of natural resources,&rdquo; says Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida) &mdash; speaking of Venezuela.
In their more candid moments, D.C.&rsquo;s regime-change crowd is upfront about their aims. Drugs? What drugs?
&ldquo;In a democracy in Venezuela, their resources are massive,&rdquo; Scott tells the Semafor site, &ldquo;so there&rsquo;ll be a lot of people who want to invest.&rdquo;
Adds the reliably warmongering Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina): &ldquo;There&rsquo;ll be a lot of business going to Venezuela, I think, if you had a better business environment.&rdquo;
Semafor reports that &ldquo;During last month&rsquo;s IMF-World Bank meetings in Washington, Barclays organized a private meeting to talk investment opportunities with Venezuelan opposition leader Mar&iacute;a Corina Machado.&rdquo;
At the same time, the investment bank UBS assembled an eight-page memo &ldquo;visualizing the day after tomorrow&rdquo; in Venezuela. Citing the country&rsquo;s oil reserves, its &ldquo;fertile soil&rdquo; and &ldquo;severely underutilized economy,&rdquo; the report says &ldquo;Venezuela&rsquo;s transition away from Chavismo could unlock major opportunities.&rdquo; (Chavismo refers to the socialist platform of Venezuela&rsquo;s president Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013. Maduro was his chosen successor.)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;Perhaps the most aggressive proponent of regime change in Venezuela has been Exxon Mobil and think tanks funded by the oil company,&rdquo; writes Harrison Berger for The American Conservative.
Venezuela is home to the world&rsquo;s biggest oil deposits &mdash; the thick and sulfurous kind of crude that American refineries are built to process.
Exxon donates at least $250,000 a year to the Center for Strategic and International Studies &mdash; &ldquo;which frequently hosts conferences with Washington&rsquo;s various handpicked Venezuelan leaders,&rdquo; Berger writes. &ldquo;Such think tanks advocate maximum-pressure sanctions and market regime-change war in Venezuela as &lsquo;democracy promotion.&rsquo;&rdquo; Exxon CEO Darren Woods serves on CSIS&rsquo; board.
Venezuela is also home to significant deposits of rare earth elements &mdash; those minerals with unpronounceable names that are essential to everything from your smartphone to fighter jets. Due in part to decades of poor decision-making in Washington, China presently accounts for 70% of global rare-earth mining.
So there you go. Venezuela is not about drugs. It&rsquo;s about a resource grab.
And the moneymaking possibilities? They&rsquo;re highly theoretical at this stage. The investment banks are operating on the assumption that regime change in Venezuela will be &mdash; to use that infamous term from Iraq &mdash; a &ldquo;cakewalk.&rdquo;
As in Iraq, that assumption could be proven catastrophically wrong.
More about that tomorrow, or perhaps later this week. We have other business to tend to&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />About the &ldquo;AI Bubble&rdquo;...
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Here we go again with mainstream nonsense: &ldquo;AI Bubble Fears Hammer Stocks for Fourth Straight Session&rdquo; says a Wall Street Journal alert on your editor&rsquo;s iPad.
In the first place, the part about the &ldquo;fourth straight session&rdquo; isn&rsquo;t even true. The S&amp;P 500 and the Nasdaq were more or less flat on Friday. But they did tumble on Thursday, and again after we hit &ldquo;send&rdquo; on yesterday&rsquo;s edition, and so far today as well.
The &ldquo;AI bubble&rdquo; chatter is a convenient narrative the media have latched onto. The reality is that the market was overstretched. A pullback of 5% is a perfectly normal occurrence, and we haven&rsquo;t had that since the &ldquo;Liberation Day&rdquo; scare in April.
In fact, we&rsquo;re still not there now: The S&amp;P 500 sits a little over 6,600 as we write, down another 1% on the day. The index would have to fall another 55 points to be down 5% from its record close on Oct. 28.
Just some perspective. Nvidia&rsquo;s earnings release after the close tomorrow could flip the media&rsquo;s narrative in an instant.
Among the big movers today is Cloudflare Inc. (NET) &mdash; a major provider of web-hosting services. If you had trouble accessing ChatGPT or X this morning, that&rsquo;s because Cloudflare sustained a major outage.
The rumor mill went wild about a massive cyberattack, but the company says the trouble was more pedestrian: A configuration file that looks out for malicious traffic &ldquo;grew beyond an expected size of entries.&rdquo;
Whatever the reason, shares of Cloudflare sank badly on the open; as the morning wore on, the loss on the day was trimmed to less than 2%.
<a id="3"></a>
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Meanwhile, precious metals are rebounding from their own Monday-afternoon sell-off.
At last check, gold is up about 13 bucks to $4,057 and silver has gained 42 cents, sitting at $50.55.
Crude has inched its way back over $60.
Bitcoin sank under $90,000 overnight but has since recovered to nearly $93,600. Ethereum has bounced off the $3,100 level.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Now It Can Be Told (Chinese Gold)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The dam has finally broken: The mainstream is acknowledging China&rsquo;s gold accumulation is much greater than what shows up in Chinese government figures.
From the Financial Times&hellip;
China&rsquo;s unreported gold purchases could be more than 10 times its official figures as it quietly tries to diversify away from the U.S. dollar, say analysts, highlighting the increasingly opaque sources of demand behind bullion&rsquo;s record-breaking rally.
Publicly reported buying by China&rsquo;s central bank has been so low this year &mdash; 1.9 tonnes purchased in August, 1.9 tonnes in July and 2.2 tonnes in June &mdash; that few in the market believe the official figures.
The French banking giant Societe Generale estimates that Beijing&rsquo;s total purchases could reach 250 metric tons this year. But officially, the year-to-date total is only about 10% of that figure.
The FT wants to make the story all about Donald Trump. It cites Nicky Shiels, an analyst at the Swiss refinery MKS Pamp: &ldquo;It makes sense to just report the bare minimum, if need be, for fear of reprisal from the U.S. administration. Gold is seen as a pure USA hedge. In most emerging markets it is in central banks&rsquo; interest to not fully disclose purchases.&rdquo;
But non-mainstream experts, including Paradigm&rsquo;s own Jim Rickards, have said for over 15 years that Beijing understates its gold reserves. Officially they stand just over 2,300 metric tons.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The real total is likely more than twice as large &mdash; and the goal is to accumulate a stash to rival Washington&rsquo;s 8,133.5 metric tons.
A decade ago, Jim wrote that Beijing&rsquo;s endgame was to have a &ldquo;seat at the table&rdquo; along with the United States, the European Union and Japan whenever the next financial crisis rolled around and the global financial system had to be reset.
But that was when Beijing and Washington were on friendlier terms.
Now the goal is to facilitate easier trade and transactions &mdash; bypassing the dollar &mdash; with the other BRICS countries like Russia and India.
That means China&rsquo;s trading partners need to accumulate their own gold &mdash; which means central bank gold purchases <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/57-days#3">will continue to keep a floor under the gold price</a> for years to come.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Really, this one&rsquo;s too obvious. But it still elicits a chuckle&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3uHJ3NCrNgBiDlxseqWM4c/c608e4f9fc96e87acda37d68a2ffe33b/FMF-Issue-11-18-25_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Really, worse than rent because the buyer shoulders the maintenance costs, right?
Moving on&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Good Help Is Hard to Find (Continued)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;I have several close friends who own businesses,&rdquo; a reader writes on the topic of why good help is so hard to find.
&ldquo;The biggest labor problem they have is that most people they hire have a terrible work ethic. They show up late, do the minimum work necessary, fail to show up without notice, make up lousy excuses for not showing up, etc. In most cases, my friends don't even have to fire anyone because they just quit showing up.
&ldquo;A secondary problem is the lack of education. I've followed the problems in education since the early 1980s when I decided to go to college after dropping out of high school in 1969. By that time, colleges were testing applicants for their math and English skills to see if they needed remedial teaching. I took the tests with about 30 recent high school graduates. I and one other qualified for college algebra and I and two others qualified for English 101. I've also noted over the years that those with an excellent work ethic are also easy to teach. That's why I wrote that education was a secondary problem.
&ldquo;As to how a lower labor quality might be related to illegal immigration, I have noted that of the Mexican immigrants I've hired or worked with, almost all of them had an excellent work ethic. So it is possible that illegal immigrants returning home is complicating our labor quality issue.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;No question there are labor issues &mdash; not just with a reduction in the illegal alien workforce, but also in getting educated office workers!&rdquo; chimes in another.
&ldquo;The competence of applicants is shockingly bad. The work ethic is also lacking overall. I have had thousands of employees over my 45-year career as a business owner and the lack of education (spelling, grammar, etc.) is at a new low.
&ldquo;Funny story: My yacht was in the shipyard in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in July. Ten people were working on its bottom, employed by a subcontractor. One morning ICE showed up, two escaped over the fence and eight were put in the van never to be seen again.... I can imagine that dozens of the other yards in Florida are having similar issues. Not good for inflation&hellip;&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;The only surprise to me of the &lsquo;good help is hard to find&rsquo; response is that it isn&rsquo;t HIGHER,&rdquo; says our final correspondent.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve observed increasingly over the past 30 years in the U.S. Army and construction trades that the work ETHIC of the entire country has eroded/is eroding, revealing the bedrock of entitlement and sheer laziness.
&ldquo;I grew up in a farm and entrepreneurial environment where work ethic was a well-attended religion of small operations. As industrial farming and corporate culture replaced these traditional methods, there came employees&hellip; people with no incentive to work harder. Moreover, government subsidies and bailouts replaced incentives to &lsquo;work for it.&rsquo;
&ldquo;At this point, my business ventures must shift away from relying on quality laborers (and tenants who neglect to pay rent) into individual enterprises, as good help is nearly impossible to find (outside of illegal aliens and the Amish). This boils down to a cultural shift to entitlement and handouts.
&ldquo;Love the 5! Thanks and blessings!!&rdquo;
Dave: Thanks to everyone for their input.
We have other topics to tackle in our backlogged mailbox &mdash; including the fate of New York City under the incoming Mayor Mamdani. Catch you tomorrow!